OraNA :: Oracle News Aggregator

I am trying to gather more information to help provide a better source of information for the IDM community.  I have put together a simple survey to give you the opportunity to provide feedback and to help steer the direction of this new publication.  We are targeting the first part of November for the initial release and would love to have your feedback to help shape this great resource.   The survey should take about 10 minutes of your time and as a thank-you I am giving a way a free year (1 year) subscription to everyone that completes the survey (be sure to include your email address).

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Survey (http://www.tumy-tech.com/idm-publication-survey)

Thanks,

Brad Tumy

Filed under: IdM

Download OSBS11g here (14MB)..

Introduction
A few years ago, when Oracle had only the BPEL component, deployment was rather complex. Therefore I create my own build tool, replacing the obant tool and ignoring the existing build.xml files, supplied within your JDeveloper project. Now with Oracle 11g the SCA composite is introduced and we are running on the Oracle Weblogic Server.

It took me some time to upgrade the Oracle SOA Build Server to the 11g version. Many new features have been added:

• Supports Oracle SOA 11g (from 11.1.1.3, aka PS2)
• Deploy/Undeploy SCA composites
• Deploy/Undeploy MDS
• Support of partitions
• Deploy to diferent targets
• Restructured project directory
  
• Restructured environment properties
  
• Updated documentation (Use Guide)

Overview
The default tools of SOA 10g SOA 11g, is only focussing on deployment of a single component (BPEL / ESB / SCA). While in real life, more components are involved with a deployment. You can think on Java application; data-model changes, etc. To overcome this issue, and create a mechanism to deploy multiple type of components, a general "build.xml" that is able to compile and deploy components.

The solution described in the next paragraphs will take this into account.

Functionality
The build tool covers the following features and can be easily change and extended to customer requirements:

• Depends on SOA 11g environment, installed soa_domain
• Using full ANT tasks features, Ant 1.7 + Ant-Contrib tasks
• Support of Multiple environments; Dev / Test / Acceptance / Production / ...
• Deploy SCA composites
• Undeploy SCA components
  
• UnDeploy MDS artifacts
• Deploy MDS artifacts
• Deploy SQL
• Integration with SubServersion; download latests or tags
• Stand-alone tool ; not depending on Oracle installation
• Compile and Deploy Java programs
• Supporting 'MakeAll'

Configuration
To use the build tool some configuration must be made. Most of all settings are located in properties files. Configure the build tool configuration file to prepare the deployment for this release. Edit the following file:

$BUILD_TOOL/build.env

In build.env, edit ANT_HOME and ANT_JAVA_EXTENSIONS, change the first part of the path to where the package was copied to ($BUILD_TOOL). Also change LOG_DIR in build.env, log files will go to this directory.

An example of this file is here

...

LOG_DIR=/home/oracle/buildtool/log
FMW_HOME=/app/oracle/products/11g/fmw
SOA_HOME=/app/oracle/products/11g/admin/domains/soa_domain

... 

Manual Deployment

Download
Download the latest version of your project. Example for SystemTest environment:

obbuild.sh -e test Download

Note: it will use the file test/replace_.properties to execute the find and replace for the endpoints.


Example for tag 2.0.23 being the current version for acceptance:

obbuild.sh -e acc Download 2.0.22

Example for revision 1254 for development:

obbuild.sh Download rev 1254

Note: it will use the file test/replace_.properties to execute the find and replace for the endpoints.

The replace.properties file is used for a general replacement of tokens in your projects. The file describes how tokens can be replaced in one or
all BPEL processes, ESB services.

Syntax:

find.seq.name=[all|]
[all|].seq.find.value=
[all|].seq.replace.value=

Example:
Replace in all the files localhost:9700 into 127.0.0.1:8001

find.1.name=all
all.1.find.value=localhost:9700
all.1.replace.value=localhost:8001

Example:
Replace in HellWorld bpel process the default domain and the hostname

find.1.name=HelloWorld
HelloWorld.1.find.value=localhost:9700
HelloWorld.1.replace.value=192.168.0.1:8888

find.2.name=HelloWorld
HelloWorld.2.find.value=/orabpel/default
HelloWorld.2.replace.value=/orabpel/systest


Deploy generic SCA composite
Deploy each BPEL process separately. Example for Test environment:

For example: Compile and Deploy Helloworld 1.0 to the default domain of node1


obbuild.sh -e test DeploySCA HelloWorldSCA 1.0 default node1

Deploy Java WebService
Deploy each Java process separately. Example for Test environment:

obbuild.sh -e test DeployJava HelloJavaWorld

Note: default-application.xml must be included in source code.

Automatic Deployment
To deploy the whole system at once, use the task 'MakeAll'.

obbuild.sh -e test MakeAll

Note: This target is using the 'makeall_test.properties' that describes the correct sequence of all the AIA components (Java, BPEL, and ESB) that will be built and deployed. The next table shows an example of the 'makeall.properties' file.

sql.make.10=car
deploy.version.10=1.0
deploy.target.10=dbnode

mds.make.15=common_capesoa
deploy.version.15=1.0
deploy.target.15=node1

sca.make.100=HelloWorldSCArefxx
deploy.version.100=1.1
deploy.target.100=node1

sca.make.200=HelloWorldSCArefxx
deploy.version.200=2.1
deploy.target.200=node2

sca.make.300=HelloWorldSCArefxx

sca.make.20=HelloWorldSCArefbb
sca.make.30=HelloWorldSCArefcc
sca.make.40=HelloWorldSCA

A target can be given to deploy to a particular node or database.

targets.properties
target.node1=node1.vijfhuizen.local:8010
target.node1.username=weblogic
target.node1.password=welcome1

target.node2=node2.vijfhuizen.local:8020
target.node2.username=weblogic
target.node2.password=welcome1

target.admin=t3://192.168.2.10:7001
target.admin.username=weblogic
target.admin.password=welcome1

target.dbnode=jdbc:oracle:thin:@database.vijfhuizen.local:1521:XE
target.dbnode.username=scott
target.dbnode.password=tiger

Command line interface
The command line interface of the obbuild tool is as follows:

./obbuild.sh -?

obbuild.sh [-[hvtV] [-e environment] [-f build-file] [-m makefile] [-r replace-file] [task] [arg1] [arg2] .. [arg6]]

 -h      Shows this help
 -V      Show the version of this program
 -t      Show all the tasks in the build file
 -e      Select envirnonment property file, default 'dev', reading dev.properties
 -f      Read a specific build file, default is build.xml in current directory

-m      Read a specific makefile
 -r      Read a specific replacement file, use for promoting BPEL process to other environments.
 -v      Show verbose output
 task    The task to be executed, default is main
 arg1..6 Optional arguments passed to the build file as properties ANT.ARG1..ANT.ARG6

./obbuild.sh -t

obbuild.sh: Tasks in ./build.xml                                         
          CreateDirs - Create directory structure                        
            Download - Download latest source code                       
                       [arg=tagged-version | rev number]                 
                main - Default task                                      
             Promote - Find/Replace on one or more processes, see replace.properties
         CompileJava - Compile Java files
                       [arg1=name of the application]
           CreateWar - Create WAR file from class files
                       [arg1=name of application]
           CreateEar - Create EAR file from WAR file
                       [arg1=name of application]
          DeployJava - Deploy an EAR file to
                       [arg1=name of the application]
        UndeployJava - Undeploy an application from target
                       [arg1=name of the application]
             MakeAll - Create a new set of the application
                       [arg1=[version] [arg2=partition]
            SendMail - Send a mail
                       [arg1=to arg2=subject arg3=text]
           DeployXSD - Deploy the XSD files: creating a ZIP file
                       [arg1=Name]
          CompileSCA - Compile SCA composite
                       [arg=sca-composite-name]
           DeploySCA - Deploy SCA composite
                       [arg=composite-name] | [arg=version|1.0] [arg=partition] [arg=target]
         UndeploySCA - Undeploy SCA composite
                       [arg=sca-composite-name arg=revision | arg=target]
           DeployMDS - Deploy MDS artifact
                       [arg=oramds-artifact] arg=[target]
         UndeployMDS - Undeploy MDS artifact
                       [arg=oramds-artifact] arg=[target]
           DeploySQL - Deploy SQL
                       [arg=sql directory] | [arg=db-target]
        DeployScript - Deploy Script
                       [arg=ant|wlst] | [arg=script-name] [arg=target]

There is no support from Oracle or myself and I expect that you have the proper Oracle licences to use the Oracle software.

I recently wrote about getting ready for Insync10 and all too soon it was apon us. Melbourne is a long way from Belfast and quite a journey.

I met up with Mogens Nørgaard at Heathrow and we were very pleased to find ourselves travelling in an A380 to Singapore. Mogens is 6'3" so having the extra leg and head room was really good. We had decided to break the journey in Singapore to visit with another OakTable member Tanel Poder. Tanel and his wife are from Estonia and have actually since moved back. We had a great time with them and other friends in Singapore including the inaugural OTTTTT but more about that in a later posting.

After two days but only 1 night in Singapore we were off to Melbourne arriving mid morning on the Sunday. The conference was held in the Melbourne Conference Centre and the Hilton Coffee Shop seemed to be the place all the speakers were hanging out in as we waited for rooms to be ready. 

The conference had 700+ people which is a big growth from last year in Sydney and had a real buzz. I had a great time, meeting old friends and making new ones.

I had once met Connor McDonald at UKOUG and made the point to say hallo as he was Fujitsu, but in those days I didn't talk to the very technical. That has all changed and I really looked forward to watching a presentation where there are in excess of 300 slides. Yes 300, and honestly you simply don't notice. I met Kyle Hayley someone else I had heard off and read his blog but never met before. I caught up with Tom Kyte and Francisco Munoz Alvarez who both arrived Sunday and left Monday for New Zealand. It was lovely to catch up with Richard Foote but I did miss not seeing Chris Muir, although I did meet his boss Penny Cookson who I loved. Later I also saw Ed Roske and Stephen Feuerstein so there really was a 'geek fest' but back to that later.

On the Apps side of the house, where I actually speak I met up with Bambi Price, Sue Shaw who now she is immediate Past President of Quest has been able to get back to presenting, Luke Hodges and Daniel Strassberg from Quest.  From Oracle Cliff Godwin and Nadia Bendjedou were there, great friends I love that my role allows me to see often. I also met Gary Greishaber from the JDE stable at Oracle and Margaret Mills who I met in Colorado a few years ago. I love to mention friends but hate that inevitably I will miss some out.

Bambi Staverly and John Bushell who along with Daniel and many others were responsible for Insync10, asked  Mogens and I and others to present later in the year in Perth. I am really honoured and am happy to do so remotely but just cannot justify or find time for another visit 'down under'.

Now it may simple read that this conference was all about personal networking but that isn't true. I went to give 2 presentations on Fusion Apps which I give regularly and as I have said before I like to also learn both about Oracle and about presenting from others. I attended 2 sessions each from Tom Kyte and Mogens plus one from Connor. I may be all about the Apps but people who talk about performance and issues in the technology are very important, I have learnt so much about how to approach problems, what to look for etc. I also learn about new features and then look to how they have been utilised in the applications. 

I don't think I will be copying Connor's 300+ slide approach but I have underlined from him about the importance of  knowing your presentation inside out. He started to overrun a bit and decided to remove one example, and he knew exactly which slide number to jump to, not a moments hesitation, almost seamless.

I also like to push myself with new presentations, although I have 3 accepted for OOW that are all new and wish I had more time to bring them together, however for Insync I was trying not only a new presentation but with a co speaker. Mogens writes for the UKOUG Magazine, Oracle Scene. In his own charming and sometime controversial way he entertains and educates our readers. He once wrote about how his company moved into the Accelerators approach to Oracle E Business Suite and how this was encouraged by his business partner who normally had nothing to do with the Oracle side of things. The article 'How Apps Finally Got To Me' is as with all Mogen's content accompanied by a video. He and I were discussing this some time ago and I was really impressed that I finally had an out and out techie person talking apps. When he was asked to present at Insync I joking said 'let's so a joint presentation on Oracle Business Accelerators', and he agreed! Not only was that a risk in itself but we decided to look at it from the Partner's viewpoint. Why had Miracle and Fujitsu decided to take this approach? Many traditional System Integrators have not, why did we think it made sense and what were the benefits to us? Often I hear people say, what they want is more user stories, and yes we had a couple of case studies but we did look at it from our side. During the actual presentation we got a lot of audience interaction and I would say it was actually very successful (although Insync had no formal session feedback). However, I get ahead of myself, I had never actually been involved in OBA myself so spent time with colleagues in Fujitsu who had and need to thank them for their time. I also spoke with the Miracle project manager to ensure I knew their side of the story and pull together some slides; Mogens may not use slides, but I do. I was very nervous when the time came to present, but probably more about what unrehearsed comment Mogens might have come up with, (who am I kidding there was no rehearsal); but he behaved and at the end I wanted to do it all again.

One visitor to the conference was Simone Lemming Andersen of Strategic Communications Ltd, Denmark, someone who advises people who have a public profile, much more than an Image Consultant. She very generously agreed to watch me speak and give me feedback. She gave me advice about what to wear, one the first day I introduced Mogens and was wearing trousers with pockets, subconsciously I put my hands in them. She told me to wear trousers without pockets and when I gave my own presentations I followed her advice and did fell better. She told me which hand movements were good and which not so, advised that a little makeup would be good because of the lights, what to do with my eyes when having a pause and how to interact with the audience. She also gave me great advice about what to do when sharing the stage, and finally she gave me some feedback on my own slides. What she did best of all was gave all this advice through praise for what I do well and how to enhance that, rather than by a list of don'ts. This kind of advice on a one to one basis is invaluable and I know how lucky I was to receive it. I hope I am disciplined enough to follow through.


So I learn a lot at Insync10, about me, about Oracle Technology and about presenting in general. Thank You to everyone involved.

When a BPEL domain is delete from the BPELAdmin there are still records left in de dehydration database. These entries can be deleted:

Logon on the dehydration store database as ORABPEL

Check which domains are active:
select domain_ref from domain;

Delete all other domains:

delete suitcase_bin where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete audit_details where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete audit_trail where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete cube_instance where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete cube_scope where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete dlv_message where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete dlv_subscription where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete document_ci_ref where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete document_dlv_msg_ref where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete domain_properties where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete invoke_message where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete process where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete process_default where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete process_descriptor where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete process_log where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete wi_fault where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete work_item where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete xml_document where domain_ref not in (select domain_ref from domain);
delete wftask where domainid='[NOT EXISTING DOMAINS]';
delete wftaskhistory where domainid='[NOT EXISTING DOMAINS]';
delete wftaskmetadata where domainid='[NOT EXISTING DOMAINS]';
delete wftask where domainid='[NOT EXISTING DOMAINS]';

Did this post help you in any way can you please leave a comment? This will motivate me writing more posts.

Just a quick update about the next London Coherence SIG.  We’ve scheduled it for the 1st of October.  It will be held in the London Oracle Offices and like the last event, will run all day.  The morning will be dedicated to workshops with talks in the afternoon.

We should have the schedule, registration pages and email invitations out this week.

– Brian

Today we released an incremental update for each of the Coherence Incubator projects that adds support for Coherence 3.6 and resolves a number of issues discovered by the community since the last set of releases.

As part of the update you’ll notice that each project now provides separate downloads for Coherence 3.5 and Coherence 3.6, thus allowing each project to take advantage of the latest Coherence features and simultaneously maintain backwards compatibility to Coherence 3.5 where possible and appropriate.

I’m sure you’ll find the new Coherence 3.6 support useful as you migrate from Coherence 3.5

– Brian

We live in a complex world. A world that is constantly changing. Businesses need to be able to adapt and evolve, rapidly, or face the consequences of failure. How do companies keep up with new customer demands, evolving business processes, new legislation, industry regulations and compliance, and business channels fueled by the Internet, and more? How do organizations protect against the risk of failure? We attend Oracle Open World, a forum to collaborate with peers, industry advisors, and leading experts on how to create and leverage solutions to solve complex business problems. Providing attendees contribute their expertise, knowledge power, intellectual capital, demonstrations, and leading practices so that other organizations have not only a proof point, but a roadmap to success. Others attend to learn, collaborate, network, and inquire how to design their solutions appropriately. It is a melting pot or ideas, solutions, and approaches for everyone to leverage. Opportunities abound to discuss the best businesses use of Oracles technology, so we can be more agile, flexible, and dynamic to meet the business challenges of today-- and address the unforeseen issues of tomorrow. Decisions will be made at Open World that will impact many organizations—product direction, architecture, and best use of technology. It’s important to remember that in today’s technology marketplace, we have many choices, and we have to be careful that we select, design, and implement the right platforms that will provide the appropriate solutions for our business—we must be equipped for success. Technology decisions come with risks that include stability, scalability, agility, performance, and meeting business expectations. No company can afford to make the wrong technology decisions, and this is why Open World is so important. Attendees can count on Oracle Open World to provide the proper insight, approach, and products to not only mitigate risks, but provide a roadmap to success.

A year in an organisation has behind it a cycle of events and milestones, and UKOUG is no different. We need to look at our strategy constantly and best practice dictates that you take a day out to look at this in isolation. The board need to look at how we run UKOUG, things are changing, budgets are tight and how do we stay relevant and attractive to our members?

We rely heavily on volunteers, especially the SIG chairs and Oracle liaisons who spend so much time with the members, they have so much insight to share. Twice a year we try to get all the volunteers together, once is just before what is now known as the TEBS (Technology and E Business Suite) conference in December but the main opportunity to learn from them is our summer volunteers day. It is a very long day with lots to be packed in and then a dinner to say thank you for all their hard work.

A few days ago a good friend Paul Pedrazzi tweeted this:


A million blogs withered and died as their authors stopped taking the time to process their thoughts... and switched instead to simply copying and pasting them into the world, 140 meaningless characters at a time.
– Thnks Fr Th Mmrs: The Rise Of Microblogging, The Death Of Posterity

The idea as I see it is that as we throw out our thoughts on twitter we no longer have the discipline to write a more researched article in a blog.

I understand the point but am not sure I agree. In my world, that of Oracle, there are some phenomenal bloggers who write both entertaining and educational blogs. I have to say most of them are technically based, and it may be easier to write about something 'tangible' rather than thoughts; but many of them do also 'comment'. My favourite bloggers are Cary Millsap, Steven Chan, Ray Wang, Floyd Teter and Mogens Nørgaard would make the list if he blogged a little more. I subscribe to the OakTable blog RSS and OracleApps and read most of them. I have to admit if they are too technical I switch off but it is amazing how much you can learn.It is true that the people listed are my friends but wouldn't it be rude not to be interested in what they write?

Kyle Hailey blogged recently to share the of PHD school in pictures well I never even went to university but I think I can use the analogy to show what ready blogs has done for me (you may need to read the original very short blog if you are not familiar).

So to me:












Sometimes you are introduced to new blogs and start to follow them. One I love and can't recommend highly enough is Big Daddy Paul. The connection with Oracle is that the subject of the blog is a young boy whose Mother works for Oracle. His father who had his own successful career decided to give it up to be the primary carer, and my he is funny. I will be first in the queue to buy the promised book. Not only is it funny but it so resonates with my feeble attempts at child rearing, (but everything turned out OK my daughter is wonderful). But I digress.....

Do I therefore think Twitter is bad? No, twitter gives you an instant release and quite often an instant reply. It is often used to point to blog postings or articles that otherwise I might not have seen. I LOVE twitter at an event, a conference, it adds so much 'buzz' to the event and if you can't be there you can feel a small part of it.

Can I blame Twitter for slowing down my blog posts? Not really, I am a procrastinator and although reading twitter and facebook might take up time, if it wasn't that it might be something else. However today I am making a big effort to catch up, and I will try and be more disciplined.

A tweet by meneer pointed me to this promotional video:

Don’t think this will settle the score for Java. However it is a good distraction… What are your thoughts? Please leave them in the comments.

Following are the principles of Agile I like to incorporate into projects:

• Organizing phases into 2-4 week iterations (Sprints) so that there is distinct product or deliverable assigned to each iteration.
• Performing User Acceptance Testing (UAT) early in the system life cycle, rather than the end of the SDLC, to gather business user feedback early and often.
• Designing the system with the expectation of change. This allows agility and flexibility. I assume that the services we build will need to be dynamic with the changing business climate and will need rapid.
• Maintaining an On-going "Product Backlog" which is ranked and prioritized list of requirements. The list is constantly re-ranked and prioritized and the top candidates are inputs into the next Sprint iteration.
• Brief daily Status meetings (Scrum) to check progress, roadblocks, and planned activities.
• Collaboration amongst the team and amongst the business team is key to vetting solid and practical frameworks
• Keep it Simple. Making governance frameworks and patterns overly complex runs the risk of limiting adoption
• Business Processes are the foundation of what applications have as an objective, and in Agile the business stakeholders are a key to driving the development process (having a Product Owner).
• Governance requires Multi-stakeholder team, consisting of representation from various IT and business teams.
• The use of a Burn Down Chart can help all stakeholders track progress of the overall initiatives.
• Rapid. Using Agile will force teams to get working services and deliverables in a quicker fashion and forces accountability across the team.. This also has a good impact to team morale (developers tend to enjoy the Agile process)
• Good for creating a Knowledge base to capture "lessons learned" early and often for continuous improvement.
• Agile reduces waste; Captures bugs early, avoids goldplating, committed team members

Some of the more radical Agile principles that I don't necessarily prescribe or apply include:

• Limitation of documentation. In projects, especially around governance, certain documentation is key such as patterns, SLA's, contracts, frameworks, etc
• Self-organizing teams. I feel that leaving the teams to self-organize can be a bit optimistic and instead I feel a project sponsor is best suited to help organize the team, with our strategic input on personnel skills and capabilities.
• Documenting User Stories (Requirements) on stick notes. While this is good for collaborative working group sessions, I find it is very important to electronically capture and publish the User Stories for all team members to view through an online, browser enabled tool
• Individual iterations over processes and tools. I feel its important to follow a disciplined process and using the right tools to build services and applications is important as well.
• Not following a plan. I feel it is important to have a high level Roadmap for tackling projects, and maturity model that outlines milestones to achieve adoption and capability achievement.

Are you done with your schedule builder for Oracle Open World 2010? Don’t forget to register for Pretty UIs: creating great looking applications with ADF Faces (S316896). Different from last year’s presentation Maiko Rocha and myself are not going to be focusing on ADF Faces Layout Managers and Skinning. This time it’s more about tips and techniques on how to make you UI components more dynamic and reusable.

Just to give you a taste of what we’re going to present I’ve prepared a sample application where I use JQuery with ADF Faces to create a slideshow. This sample has no HTML, of course... Otherwise it would be too easy. :)

If I had to create this app in html it would look like this:


So, the question is… How do I turn html tags into ADF Faces Layout Managers? There’s a tip here. PanelGroupLayouts can be easily mapped to html tags according to the layout attribute value you chose.

Layout	HTML Tag
default	span
horizontal	table
vertical	div
scroll	div (overflow: auto, height: 100% and width: 100%)

Which means that in ADF terms the code would be:

Also notice the use of af:group. Not surrounding your images with af:group will cause ADF to create a separate div for each image inside your PanelGroupLayout.

Want to know more details? Attend our session. See you in OOW 2010. ;)

This is a temporary post that was not deleted. Please delete this manually. (b1bd0788-ab90-4ea3-a1b4-d429bea1e38f - 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)

Cloud Computing adoption is taking off. Two of the major principles of Cloud are: (1) resource pooling through mulitenancy (2)Elasticity. Multitenancy is the ability to have a single resource serves multiple clients. Example in Cloud is having multiple customers served by the same physical server. Elasticity is the ability to add or plug-in resources, fairly dynamically, to scale the server up or to scale down. For example, swapping in CPU, memory, disk space, etc.

Both of these principles are reliant on virtualization, the ability to run multiple, independent instances of software or hardware within a resource that was originally designed for a single use. The best example is a Server hosting multiple, independent operating systems that each are performing seperatlely from each other.

The leading vendor in the virtualization space is clearly VmWare. VmWare has been around the longest, and has the greatest market footprint, and has the most efficient use of hypervisor. Challengers in virtulaization space include Oracle, Microsoft, and few others.

The problem with VmWare, or the elephant in the room to speak of, is the # of enterprise software products that are still not supported on VmWare, namely Oracle. The largest example is Oracle, since they are the leader in enterprise software. Oracle software is only supported on Oracle's own product-- Oracle VM. Now, I do know there are a lot of customers running Oracle databases and Oracle middleware on VmWare and haven't had any issues yet. But, if there is an issue, these customers must understand their environment configured with VmWare is not supported by Oracle, Inc. You will be required to reproduce your issue in a non-VmWare environment OR on Oracle's VM software to get bug and issue support. This is scary, especially the number of customers I know who run Oracle on VmWare. Just the sheer possibility of losing production data or having long system downtime due to a non support issue, and then having to reproduce the entire environment to get support is enough risk for me take a strong look at Oracle VM so not to impact my Production systems. However, I'm no dummy and realize a lot of customers are running on VmWare just fine and haven't seen any issues, yet. I'd ask how advanced or complex their environement is? Are they doing RAC, Clustering, Load Balancing, Data Replication, or other advanced configurations? All of these could add complexity and impact the environment on a virtualization architecture. High performing applications that require this level of configuration could be risky in a VmWare environment, especially since VmWare does its own version of memory management, throwing off software like Oracle that manages its own SGA and PGA structures. Huge considerations for any customer thinking about virutalization-- lack of vendor support is serious stuff even if you think it works ok.

A second consideration is cost savings. This is one of the main drivers for virtualization. Squeeze more out of my existing resources instead of using it for a single purpose. For example, if I buy a physical server and its CPU and memory is very underutilized, then I can virtualize more Operating Systems onto the server and use the server for multiple purposes. This is good for hardware savings and not having to procure more hardware for your software applications, but won't buy you anything with your software licensing savings. the large software companies are very aware of this, and they will not give you a break on your software for putting more on a single resource. This is why they will not allow tools like VmWare to emulate the CPU's to make the customer's licensing less expensive.

I know VmWare has lots of examples where software on their product runs issue-free. This is great and I applaud the fact that it should work ok in a basic configured environement. However, VmWare cannot control the other software vendors like Oracle. I would ask to please get Oracle products officially supported on VmWare, and then we can all rest easier at night.

So, Big Elephant in the room-- to VmWare or not VmWare? No virtualziation, clearly makes a "Cloud Environment" difficult to achieve, especially losing multitenancy and elasticity principles. So, your first option is to ask your vendor what their policy is on virtualization support. If its a company like Oracle, consider using their Oracle VM product if you still need virutalization. VmWare may be your corporate standard for virtualization, but its not supported, and that is enough risk to avoid it until it is fully supported.

Everyone likes to be on the side of the good guys, but just checking through the news today I’m starting to wonder whether Oracle cares how they come across.  Bear with me …

There’s no doubt in my mind that smart phones are a great thing and the iPhone has lead this.  I know Blackberry is tops in the US, and I don’t know what the sales figures are over here in the UK but it seems that 6 months ago everyone had an iPhone.

The tide is turning however, although iPhones are still popular, many of the early adopters are starting to become disenchanted with the Apple approach (and not just the issues with the iPhone 4, I’m thinking of the ‘walled garden’ that is the App marketplace too).  When their carrier contracts complete and they are no longer locked in, many of these early adopters are switching to Android.  To my mind it’s not going to be too long before Android phones are everywhere.

The same – I believe – will apply to tablets, although there’s a couple of years lag behind the mobile phone market.  The iPad is the one that breaks the mould.  I can imagine many people will buy a tablet in a few years time when their web browsing and email laptop breaks.  I don’t think it’ll be an iPad though.  Android tablets will be freely available and popular by then.

So, I have an idea that in the near future the mobile and tablet markets will be dominated by Android.  What does this mean for Oracle and how they’re seen in the market?

Most people in the IT Industry have an awareness of how ‘good’ a company is.  And by this I don’t mean their technical skill or the quality of their products.  I mean how positively they are viewed by the public.  Whether they do the right thing, whether they are ethically sound, their karma, if you like.

At one end you have Microsoft, they are (or maybe ‘were’) the ‘evil empire’.  I like a lot of MS products, but this is definitely how they’re perceived in the marketplace.  The other end – the ‘overwhelmingly positive’ end – is probably empty, the nearest incumbent being the open source movement.  Apple were viewed positively, but there’s been a definite shift towards the evil end of the spectrum over the last 12 months.  Steve Jobs doesn’t have the lustre that he had 12 months ago.  Google and their “don’t be evil” is to the right of centre (although they too have committed the odd dubious move recently – Streetview, Buzz, Verizon/Net Neutrality – they’re still positive thanks to the brand goodwill from Search, Android and their free tools).

So where is Oracle?  They took a hit when they acquired PeopleSoft (a hostile takeover of a very positively viewed company is always going to leave you painted as the bad guy!).  They were probably perceived to be somewhere between MS and Apple.

But now we have the lawsuit to extract money from Google for Java.  This is a patent that Sun hadn’t enforced (maybe they were just sneakily waiting for it to become prevalent enough before making their move?) but Oracle can smell the blood in the water.  According to this post in The Register, James Gosling (the father of Java) was grilled about the patent situation between Sun and Google during the Sun acquisition and “could see the Oracle lawyer’s eyes sparkle.”

“And yes, Oracle isn’t just after money, it’s after blood. In its complaint, Oracle doesn’t just demand monetary infringement damages, it’s seeking to have any code that is found to infringe upon Oracle’s copyrights “impounded and destroyed.”” (Daniel Eran Dilger – link to full article below)

They have to be careful that it’s seen as claiming what is rightfully theirs, rather than an aggressive attack on Google and the Open Source community.  That would be a dent to the Oracle image.

Even worse though, if the move negatively impacts Android then it’s going to clearly cement Oracle’s reputation as a doer of evil.

Further comment here:

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/08/14/how-oracle-might-kill-googles-android-and-software-patents-all-at-once/

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/howlett/is-oracle-becoming-an-evil-empire/2389

Image Credits:

Apple/Android: MediaPost

Steve Jobs/Anakin: Casey Fleeser/SomeGeekIntn