4/AB3@ />> 23D3:=>;3<B A3/;:3AA 5@72 7<B35@/B7=< A/D3 ;7::7=<A >719 /<G B6@33 =@/1:3 272
ORACLE DOESNâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T NEED TO MAKE COMPROMISES. And you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to either. Oracle saved a ton of resources (and money) by consolidating storage on our easy-to-manage single-storage architecture. They also use NetApp storage for their grid infrastructure, so you know our solutions will integrate seamlessly into your Oracle grid environments. With NetApp, provisioning is easy and nondisruptive. Cloning is effortless and near-instantaneous, so you can run more tests in less time, accelerating QA cycles and application development. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no wonder weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re trusted by the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest companies, like Oracle. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re proud to have Oracle as our customer and partner. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the kind of relationship we live for. SETTLE FOR EVERYTHING WITH NETAPP. Save your bottom line along with your data at www.netapp.com/bizapps or call 1-866-237-8987. Š 2007 Network Appliance, Inc. All rights reserved. SpeciďŹ cations subject to change without notice. NetApp and the Network Appliance logo are registered trademarks and Network Appliance is a trademark of Network Appliance, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.
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O R A C L E.C O M /O R A C L EMA GA ZI NE
INFORMATION COMES HOME ORACLE DATABASE 11g MANAGES ALL YOUR ENTERPRISE DATA
MAKING ENTERPRISE CHOICES /42 JF08_Cover.indd 5
DEFINITELY NOT OLD-SCHOOL /49
BETTER WORKLOAD, BETTER TESTING /59
INTELLIGENCE AND IDENTITY /63 11/9/07 2:55:34 PM
11/28/07
2:52 PM
Page 1
www.red.de
omag0108pCov2_p001
Best-in-class architecture
Š 2007 Fujitsu Limited. All rights reserved. Fujitsu, the Fujitsu logo and PRIMEQUEST are registered trademarks or trademarks of Fujitsu Limited in the United States and other countries. All designations used in this document may be trademarks, the use of which by third parties for their own purposes could violate the rights of the trademark owners. Changes in design and technology are reserved. Intel, Intel Logo, Intel Inside, Intel Inside Logo, Itanium, Itanium Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.
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Page 2
for Oracle solutions. FlexFrame™ for Oracle Pre-integrated and pre-tested, FlexFrame™ for Oracle paves the way for greater flexibility and cost effectiveness in applications based on Oracle Application Server or Oracle Database. This innovative infrastructure solution distributes resources, replacing rigid hardware and software configurations with virtual relationships. PRIMEQUEST™
The fault-immune PRIMEQUEST™ server represents best-in-class SMP capabilities for Itanium®-based systems. With its high performance memory sub-system, PRIMEQUEST™ is designed to support robust and demanding database workloads. Benefit from two best-in-class dynamic IT infrastructure solutions today. Be ready for Service-Oriented Architecture tomorrow. We make sure. www.fujitsu-siemens.com
www.fujitsu.com
CONTENTS
VOLU M E XXI I , I SSUE 1
FEATUR ES
MAKING ENTERPRISE CHOICES
INFORMATION COMES HOME
With investments in SOA and other standards-based technologies, every Oracle application upgrade offers better integration choices. Find out how Oracle gives companies options for upgrades that improve performance, reduce complexity, and prepare the enterprise for the future. —David A. Kelly
Traditional relational content, unstructured content, XML, 3-D spatial data—your enterprise is home to all kinds of information. Read how customers are using Oracle Database 11g to store all their data, simplify management, and improve systems performance. —David Baum
/30
/42
DEFINITELY
NOT OLD-SCHOOL
Northwestern University faces all the IT challenges of any major corporation, plus a few that are unique to higher education. Learn how Northwestern’s IT professionals are improving and simplifying the university’s IT environment with an SOA and Oracle technology. —Alan Joch
Cover by Phil Saltonstall
/49
DE PAR T M E NTS From Our Readers / 8 From the Editor / 10 Capturing the Enterprise Imagination —Tom Haunert
12
AT OR AC LE Events / 12
Oracle News / 21
Find out about current and upcoming industry events.
With full support for Oracle and non-Oracle applications, Oracle VM promises faster, cheaper, more scalable server virtualization.
Oracle OpenWorld / 14 Highlights from the show
Oracle Resources / 16 OTN Bulletin / 17 Learn what’s happening with Oracle’s most dynamic online community.
Oracle News Briefs / 18
Interview / 22 Vince Casarez, Oracle vice president of product management, talks about Oracle WebCenter and Web 2.0.
Interview / 24 Ray Roccaforte, Oracle vice president of database development, talks about the Oracle Optimized Warehouse.
ORACLE MAGAZINE
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CONTENTS
59
TEC HNOLOGY DATABAS E R EP LAY Better Workload, Better Testing / 59
25
Use database replay to record and replay database activities for better testing. —Arup Nanda
IDENTITY
C OM MU NI TY
Intelligence and Identity / 63
Commitment / 25 Oracle promotes teacher training to improve math and science education.
Integrating Oracle Business Intelligence and Oracle Identity Management —Mark Rittman and Joel Crisp
OC P
Partner News / 26 Wipro, Promero, Centennial Software, BearingPoint, Solution Beacon, CPSG, Partners Consulting Services
Book Beat / 26 Peer-to-Peer / 28 Chris Ostrowski, Andrejus Baranovskis, Jacco Landlust
Become a Certified Expert / 67 Oracle University offers Oracle Expert certification in Oracle Real Application Clusters. —Harald van Breederode and Joel Goodman
AS K TOM On Tuning By Tracing / 71 Our technologist does a tune-up with SQL_TRACE.
—Tom Kyte
75 53
D EVEL O PER F RA MEWO RKS Services with a Smile / 53 Create data-centric Web services for SOA development in minutes. —Steve Muench
B RO WSER-B A SED Reporting from Your Browser / 57 Publish high-fidelity business intelligence reports with Oracle Application Express. —David Peake
R ES OUR C ES Oracle Certified Partner Index / 75
77
C OMMENT IN THE FIELD Succeeding with Failure / 77 Oracle Data Guard helps enable disaster recovery systems—and much more. —Ari Kaplan
ALL S EC UR E Beyond Data Protection / 79 Oracle Secure Enterprise Search and Oracle Information Rights Management protect information. —Mary Ann Davidson
ANALY S T’ S C OR NER Moving the Business Forward / 80 Nucleus Research’s Rebecca Wettemann discusses how Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle On Demand pave the way for application upgrades. —David Baum
4
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ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
12/4/07 12:09:45 PM
D a t a b a s e
M a n a g e m e n t
Can Toad® Turn Your Team Into Experts? Sit back and relax. You have Toad’s development best practices on your side. You could spend your day tracking down bad code. Or you can take control with Toad® for Oracle. Toad supports best practices through all phases of development. With Toad, your team will write expert code, no matter what their skill level. You’ll be empowered to monitor and validate code during development. And you’ll rest easy knowing only the highest performing, best quality code makes it to production.
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ImageNow enterprise document management, imaging and workflow. www.imagenow.com/oracle © 2007 Perceptive Software, Inc. ImageNow is a registered trademark of Perceptive Software, Inc. All other product and company names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. ad_oracle0801
ED ITOR IA L Editor in Chief Tom Haunert tom.haunert@oracle.com Senior Managing Editor Caroline Kvitka caroline.kvitka@oracle.com Features Editor Kay Keppler kay.keppler@oracle.com Contributing Editor and Writer Blair Campbell Editor in Chief, OTN Justin Kestelyn justin.kestelyn@oracle.com Technology Advisor Tom Kyte Contributing Writers Marta Bright, Ed DeJesus, Jeff Erickson, Aaron Lazenby, Fred Sandsmark, Rich Schwerin D ESIGN Design Director Richard Merchán PUB LISH ING Publisher Jeff Spicer jeff.spicer@oracle.com A DV ERTISING SA LES Associate Publisher Kyle Walkenhorst kyle@sprocketmedia.com +1.323.340.8585 Northwest & Central U.S. Tom Cometa thomas.cometa@sbcglobal.net +1.510.339.2403 Southwest U.S. Shaun Mehr shaun@sprocketmedia.com +1.949.923.1660 MidAtlantic U.S. Dawn Becker and Lisa Rinaldo dbeck71@optonline.net +1.732.772.0160 Northeast U.S./Canada Ann and David Schissler schissler@comcast.net +1.508.394.4026 Europe/Middle East/Africa/Asia Pacific Mark Makinney mark.makinney@oracle.com +44 0 1273 774341 Mailing-List Rentals Edith Roman Associates +1.800.223.2194, Ext. 684 PROD UCTION & OPERATIONS Sales and Production Director Jennifer Hamilton jennifer.hamilton@oracle.com +1.650.506.3794 Senior Circulation Manager Karin Kinnear karin.kinnear@oracle.com +1.650.506.1985
ED ITORIA L BOA R D Ian Abramson, Jeff Bernknopf, Karen Cannell, Andrew Clarke, Chris Claterbos, Karthika Devi, Kimberly Floss, Kent Graziano, Taqi Hasan, Tony Jambu, Tony Jedlinski, Ari Kaplan, Val Kavi, Steve Lemme, Carol McGury, Sumit Sengupta, Danisment Gazi Unal, Jonathan Vincenzo, Dan Vlamis, Billy Yu
S U B S C R I P T I ON INF ORMAT ION Subscriptions are complimentary for qualified individuals who complete the subscription card found in each issue or online at oracle.com/oraclemagazine. For change of address, mail in label with the new address to Oracle Magazine, P.O. Box 1263, Skokie, IL 60076-8263. MAG A Z I N E C USTOME R SE RVICE oracle@halldata.com, fax +1.847.763.9638, phone +1.847.763.9635 P R I VACY Oracle Publishing allows sharing of our mailing list with selected third parties. If you prefer that your mailing address or e-mail address not be included in this program, contact Customer Service at oracle@halldata.com.
R ES OURCES Oracle Products +1.800.367.8674 (U.S./Canada) Oracle Services +1.888.283.0591 Oracle Press Books www.oraclepress.com Printed by Brown Printing
Copyright © 2008, Oracle. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or otherwise reproduced without permission from the editors. ORACLE MAGAZINE IS PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS” BASIS. ORACLE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. IN NO EVENT SHALL ORACLE BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OF ANY KIND ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF OR RELIANCE ON ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED HEREIN. The information is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
ORACLE MAGAZINE
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f r o m o u r READERS
Your corrections, your opinions, and your requests: Here’s your forum for telling us what’s right and wrong in each issue of Oracle Magazine, and for letting us know what you want to read.
ARUP AGAIN
FOR THE BEGINNING
Arup Nanda has done it again, with the article “More Partitioning Choices”! [See Oracle Magazine, September/ October 2007, otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/07-sep/ o57partition.html.] The article clearly showcases the new partitioning features with just the right balance of concepts and working examples. I attended the Oracle Database 11g launch in New York, but the partitioning option was a little difficult to understand from that session. This article is wonderful in that regard. In particular, the explanation of reference partitioning is spectacular. I can’t wait to go to Oracle Database 11g to try out the new features. Please keep on publishing this type of article with high technical content.
I suggest you add a column for beginners in Oracle Magazine so as to encourage new users to build up their skills. Kobbla Emmanuel Idamah kobbla2003@yahoo.com
MORE ORACLE DATABASE 11g
I would like to thank Oracle for providing Oracle Magazine. The features in Oracle Database 11g are amazing, so could you kindly include more-detailed explanations on these features in future magazine issues? August Ahadjiste edem80us@yahoo.com
SECURITY, TOO
Oracle Magazine is very good at explaining the new features and operations of the latest Oracle software. I want to add that the magazine should also discuss security-related issues and techniques used in Oracle Database 11g. Sukhvinder Singh Deora sukhvinder.singh.deora@gmail.com
Mary Hunt mary1975.hunt@gmail.com
CORRECTION
I just read the article “More Partitioning Choices” by Arup Nanda. Then I read it again and again until I had completely internalized it. Words can’t describe how valuable the content of the article is. I’m amazed and awestruck by how well the author presented the new concepts to make it easier for the reader to grasp and put into use. I am playing with Oracle Database 11g now, and this is one article that surely helps me to pitch for the upgrade to the management. I shared this with the development staff, the architects, and other assorted individuals and everyone just “got it.” My job of convincing them [to upgrade] just got much easier. Thank you to the author, and may he produce more of this type of article. Tom Urban turbanity@excite.com
8
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In the November/December 2007 issue of Oracle Magazine, the Browser-Based column, “Application Integration Workshop,” was credited to Michael Hichwa, a past author of that column. The November/December 2007 column, however, was written by David Peake, principal product manager in Oracle’s Server Technologies division, who authored this issue’s column as well. We apologize for the error.
send mail to the EDITOR Send your opinions about what you read in Oracle Magazine, and suggestions for possible technical articles, to opubedit_us@oracle.com. Or click on the Write the Editors link on our Web site, oracle.com/oraclemagazine. Letters may be edited for length and clarity and may be published in any medium. We consider any communications we receive publishable.
ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
11/9/07 12:17:49 PM
The adventures of
Harry & Garry
PL/SQL Developer is the Oracle development tool that gives you maximum productivity, ease of use and all the features you need, for a reasonable price. Visit our website for additional details: www.allroundautomations.com/plsqldev
f r o m t h e EDITOR
Capturing the Enterprise Imagination Enterprise Web 2.0 collaboration has arrived, and I say ‘thank you.’ eb 2.0 has captured the world’s imagination. Literally. In a recent TV crime drama, for example, the victims, criminals, and detective work involved online avatars and virtual worlds. I haven’t seen or used any avatars in virtual worlds in the workplace (yet), but I’ve definitely been exposed to some Web 2.0 collaboration on the job. And I have to admit that I haven’t always immediately recognized the benefits of Web 2.0, even when they were giftwrapped and delivered right to me. I JUST MISSED IT
Recently a coworker e-mailed me about one of my “living documents.” In my experience (up to now), to call something a living document has usually been a disclaimer—a description for a document that is at risk of being out-of-date, incomplete, or containing some number of errors due to rapid and recent changes in what’s documented, lack of time by the document owner to make updates, or both. This particular living document needed updating for both reasons. My coworker was letting me know that she had posted my living document—which covered editorial requirements and process—to a new internal wiki here at Oracle. My coworker’s generosity came about because she had contributed to earlier versions of this document, so while she was posting other documents to this wiki, she did me the favor of posting my document and making some edits. And I was happy to have her post the document, but my first thought was that I was happy to have her edits—edits on a document that I’d been meaning to schedule for a formal review and update. I sent her an e-mail back, thanking her for posting the document to the wiki and then asking if she had any additional suggestions, edits, or updates she wanted to make to my document. Within seconds of clicking “Send,” I realized what I had done. In my pre–Web 2.0 world of static Web pages with one
owner/manager and desktop document information silos, asking a past contributor to one of my docs or pages if she had any edit suggestions would have made perfect sense. But she’d just loaded my doc into a wiki to which she and thousands of other people now have direct editing access. I was now in a position to get comments, edits, and additions from a large group of people directly in the new source-of-truth document without formally inviting, planning, and managing edit cycles. In the course of working on Oracle Magazine, I deal with a lot of very formal edit cycles, so while I know I’ll still be editing and updating the new wiki content, it’s nice to know there’s one less formal edit process for which I’ll need to search for stakeholders, schedule reviews, e-mail a document (that supports revision tracking), gather the changes from different drafts, reconcile changes, and so on. So after my coworker-inspired Web 2.0 epiphany, I took a look at the document content in the wiki, and for some reason, it looked better than I remembered. I made some updates, made plans to make some more, pointed some people to it, and asked them for their input (which I won’t have to dig out of multiple, revision-controlled documents). So what I used to call a living document as a disclaimer is now a true living document in the wiki, and it’s definitely living much better than it was. SPEAKING OF WIKIS
In this issue’s OTN Bulletin (on page 17), OTN editor in chief Justin Kestelyn introduces the new, official Oracle Wiki at wiki.oracle.com and invites members of the Oracle community to contribute and update real living documents for and about Oracle and the Oracle community. I echo Justin’s invitation, and look forward to collaborating with the Oracle community on wiki content about Oracle Magazine. MORE WEB 2.0
COLLABORATE Oracle discussion forums forums.oracle.com
Oracle Wiki wiki.oracle.com
READ more about Oracle WebCenter otn.oracle.com/products/webcenter
In “Web 2.0 Meets the Enterprise” (on page 22), Oracle Magazine Senior Managing Editor Caroline Kvitka talks with Vince Casarez, Oracle vice president of product management with a focus on Oracle WebCenter, about Web 2.0 in the enterprise (including wikis, blogs, and instant messaging) and how Oracle WebCenter is helping deliver Web 2.0 to the enterprise today. Check out the interview and listen to the Oracle Magazine Feature Cast at otn.oracle.com/syndication/magcasts.
LISTEN to Oracle Magazine Feature Casts otn.oracle.com/syndication/magcasts
10
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Tom Haunert, Editor in Chief tom.haunert@oracle.com
ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
11/12/07 11:56:11 AM
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a t O r a c l e EVENTS ORACLE USER GROUPS
Technology Events
Conferences and sessions to help you stay on the cutting edge HIMSS 2008
The second Gartner India CIO Summit features two tracks—Business Alignment and the Workforce, and Technology and Processes— and structured interactive roundtable discussions facilitated by Gartner analysts. Apply at www.gartnerinfo.com/ciosummitindia.
Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE)
CORBIS
February 8–10, Los Angeles This exposition includes several focused conferences, including Women in Open Source, Open Source in Education, and DOHCS (Demonstrating Open Source Health Care Systems), with technical and business tracks. Get details at www.socallinuxexpo.org.
12
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January 16 and February 20, Nashville, Tennessee
www.noug.net
www.doug.org
January 24–26, Clovis, California
With the theme “21st-Century Government Meets 21st-Century IT,” this event for government technology professionals provides business and technical training and features keynotes by New York Times technology writer David Pogue and by Frank Abagnale, whose life story inspired the movie Catch Me if You Can. Sign up at www.govtech.com/events/silo .php?id=126027.
Nashville Oracle Users Group Meetings
Join the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society for its annual conference for healthcare IT (HIT) professionals, physicians, nurses, executives, pharmacists, and vendors. Keynote speakers include former U.S. Senator Bill Frist and Revolution Chairman and CEO Steve Case. Learn more at www.himssconference.org.
February 18–19, Mumbai, India
January 28–31, Austin, Texas
www.doag.org/termine/143633
Dallas Oracle Users Group Meeting with Cary Millsap of Hotsos
Gartner India CIO Summit 2008
GTC Southwest 2008
January 15, Jena, Germany
February 24–28, Orlando, Florida
47th Annual Geomatics Engineering Conference This student-run conference, sponsored by California State University, Fresno, brings together hundreds of participants from around the world for workshops on geographic information systems, surveying, and photogrammetry. Sign up at www.csufresno.edu/ geomatics/conference.
German Oracle User Group (DOAG) Regional Meeting
January 17, Dallas, Texas
Northern California Oracle Applications User Group Training Day January 17, Santa Clara, California
www.norcaloaug.org Twin Cities Oracle User Group Winter Meeting January 17, Golden Valley, Minnesota
www.tcoug.org Atlanta Oracle Applications Users Group Meetings January 18 and February 15, Atlanta, Georgia
www.atloaug.org UKOUG UNIX SIG Meeting January 22, London
www.ukoug.org Greater Cincinnati Oracle User Group Meeting January 23, Cincinnati, Ohio
FutureTest 2008
www.gcoug.org
February 26–27, New York City
Northeast Ohio Oracle Users Group Meeting
Industry leaders will discuss the present and future of software testing at this first-of-itskind event. Expand your testing and quality assurance (QA) horizons with topics ranging from open source models to team dynamics. Interact, innovate, and network with other QA professionals. Sign up at www.futuretest.net.
Oracle Applications Users Group Free eLearning Tuesdays–Thursdays, online The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) offers free online training session to its members. Training Tuesdays and Training Wednesdays cover a range of topics and are presented by top-rated OAUG trainers. OAUG Community Thursdays highlight educational and training sessions presented at OAUG geographic and special interest group meetings. Space is limited. Register at www.oaug.org/ conferencesandeducation/elearning.
January 25, Independence, Ohio
www.neooug.org Ottawa Oracle User Group Meeting January 31, Ottawa, Canada
www.oug-ottawa.org Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group Training Days February 13–14, Denver, Colorado
www.rmoug.org Puget Sound Oracle Users Group Database SIG Hotsos training with Cary Millsap February 19–21, Bellevue, Washington
www.psoug.org
eventsLOCATOR Oracle Events oracle.com/events
Locate user groups
otn.oracle.com/collaboration/user_group
ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
11/7/07 1:52:29 PM
B:8.25 in
CMYK
T:8 in S:7 in
Alternative Thinking About Critical Data:
MISSION UNBELIEVABLY-IMPORTANT-DATA,
MISSION LIFE-OR-DEATH-DATA,
YOU GET THE IDEA. Your database is crucial to your business. That’s why HP and Oracle have teamed up to develop the HP Integrity Solution for Oracle Database. Take the first step in protecting your data. Go to hp.com/go/myoracle and use HP’s solution builder to determine the configuration that’s right for your business. Technology for better business outcomes.
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T:10.875 in
For a solution that fits your mission, go to hp.com/go/myoracle
O r a c l e OPENWORLD 2007
The Oracle OpenWorld Annual conference celebrates Oracle’s 30 years
racle OpenWorld 2007 began with a look back at Oracle’s 30-year history and a dedication to Oracle customers. From November 11 to 15, 2007, more than 40,000 Oracle customers and enthusiasts converged on San Francisco to experience the conference, the largest Oracle OpenWorld yet. Major topics at the weeklong event included integration, business intelligence, data warehousing, enterprise 2.0, server virtualization, and green computing. Throughout the week, Oracle executives including CEO Larry Ellison, President Charles Phillips, Executive Vice President Chuck Rozwat, and Senior Vice President Thomas Kurian discussed Oracle technologies for innovation and integration: Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Fusion Applications, Oracle Application Integration Architecture, and Oracle VM.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison takes the stage for his keynote presentation after an introduction by Billy Joel, who performed at the customer appreciation event.
In addition to the keynotes and more than 1,600 breakout sessions, hundreds of partners and vendors showcased products and services in the exhibition halls, and Oracle University offered onsite training and certification. Several special programs—for Oracle product lines including JD Edwards, Hyperion, and Agile Product Lifecycle Management— helped attendees dig deeper into Oracle products. At the Oracle Develop program, developers heard from leading experts on Java, .NET, XML, PL/SQL, Ajax, PHP, and other technologies. The 2007 conference also offered several new programs. The Oracle OpenWorld Unconference provided attendees with the opportunity to present their own sessions in
lively discussions about cutting-edge technologies, with a ban on Microsoft PowerPoint slides. Inside Innovation, sponsored by Intel, gave attendees a sneak peak into technologies that will influence the way we live, work, and play in the not-so-distant future.
casts, and view photos and more online. See the webLOCATOR for links to more of the Oracle OpenWorld 2007 experience. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008
JF08_OOW.indd 14
oracle.com/openworld/2007
Oracle OpenWorld podcasts oracle.com/techcasts
Oracle OpenWorld blogs, photos, and more
otn.oracle.com/events/oracle-openworld-2007
You can watch archived keynotes and videocasts, read blogs, listen to pod-
14
Oracle OpenWorld 2007
Oracle’s 30-year timeline oracle.com/timeline
ThinkQuest
www.thinkquest.org
PHOTOGRAPHY/ THE PHOTO GROUP
an informal, interactive setting. In the No-Slide Zone, attendees took part in
ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
11/21/07 2:19:52 PM
Experience and 300,000 customers.
Nidal Haddad, Jan Roehl, Karen Mazer, and Tara Hall from Deloitte Consulting accept the Oracle E-Business Suite Solution Titan Award from Oracle Senior Vice President Matt Mills (far left) and Oracle Chairman Jeff Henley (far right). At Oracle OpenWorld, Oracle PartnerNetwork presented awards to 17 North American–based partners: Accenture, CedarCrestone, CGH Technologies, Cloud Creek Systems, Deloitte Consulting, Entology, Hitachi Consulting, IBM Global Business Services, Intelenex, Io Consulting, iSP3 Solution Providers, Piocon Technologies, SYSTIME Computer Corp., Tallgrass Technologies, Terillium, Trianz, and TUSC.
ROBERT BENGTSON
Oracle President Charles Phillips announces Oracle VM, a scalable, low-cost server virtualization product that supports both Oracle and non-Oracle applications.
ThinkQuest, an international Web site–building competition for students sponsored by the Oracle Education Foundation, brought more than 30 award-winning students from 17 countries to Oracle OpenWorld. The 2007 winners (pictured) hail from Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Croatia, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Romania, Singapore, Switzerland, the United States, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. Hundreds of Oracle partners displayed and demonstrated their solutions in Moscone Center’s exhibition hall.
ORACLE MAGAZINE
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a t O r a c l e RESOURCES
What’s New at Oracle The latest Webcasts, courses, and online content WEBCASTS Web 2.0 in the Enterprise: Separating Myths from the New Realities of Collaborative Business Processes
oracle.com/pls/ebn/live_viewer.main?p_ shows_id=5828710 Sonny Singh, senior vice president, Products and Industries Business Unit, Oracle; Thomas Kurian, senior vice president, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle; and Andrew McAfee, associate professor, Harvard Business School, discuss the role of Web 2.0 in the enterprise and how Oracle WebCenter Suite supports implementing Web 2.0 capabilities in business processes. ECM Profile Online Seminar Series
oracle.com/dm/08q1field/8396_ev_ aiim_ecm_webseminars.html Oracle has partnered with AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, to present six 60-minute profiles of Oracle content management customers. Featured topics include Web content management, records management, and secure enterprise search.
ORACLE UNIVERSITY PeopleSoft HRMS 8.8 to 9.0 Delta
oracle.com/education (Search keyword: HRMS 9) Get an in-depth look at the enhancements and changes made from Oracle’s PeopleSoft HRMS Release 8.8 to Release 9.0. This two-day class includes examples and several activities that address the new features in PeopleSoft HRMS, from implementing security enhancements to the introduction of a centralized Profile Management module that delivers enterprisewide talent management. PeopleTools Certified Expert certification
oracle.com/education (Search keyword: certification) Oracle University is now offering two new credentials for PeopleTools experts: PeopleTools Developer Certified Expert
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and PeopleTools Advanced Developer Certified Expert. These credentials are for developers who are proficient at developing, implementing, and customizing Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise applications.
The Benefits of the PeopleSoft HCM 8.3 to 9.0 Wrapper
PODCASTS
oracle.com/applications/podcasts.html Shaun Braun, director of release operations, PeopleSoft, discusses the new upgrade wrapper for Oracle’s PeopleSoft HCM and what customers can expect from it.
Focus on Embedded Technologies: The In-Memory Database Explained
Automating Paper-Based Processes with Imaging and Business Process Management
oracle.com/techcasts Mike Olson, vice president of embedded technologies, Oracle, describes the architecture and functionality of the Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database, a solution for extremely fast and predictable application performance.
oracle.com/products/middleware/ ofmradio.html Sancho Pinto, principal product manager for Oracle Imaging and Process Management, discusses how to image-enable your enterprise applications and eliminate process bottlenecks. Find out how to minimize document processing costs, reduce error and loss, and cut physical storage space costs.
The Secret History of Oracle Berkeley DB
oracle.com/techcasts Margo Seltzer, one of the inventors of Berkeley DB and still an architect on the Oracle Berkeley DB team, explains the origins of the world’s most popular embedded database.
For Oracle product information, call the number for your region:
Inside Oracle AppsLab
Country
oracle.com/techcasts Paul Pedrazzi, founder of Oracle AppsLab, a small think tank within Oracle that evangelizes Web 2.0 technologies and concepts, talks with Oracle Technology Network Editor in Chief Justin Kestelyn about its origins and future plans.
U.S. and Canada .....................................1.800.367.8674 Australia ....................................................1800.735.467 Austria.......................................................0800.29.7626 Belgium ........................................................0800.73280 Brazil .........................................................0800.901.985 China.........................................................800.810.0161 Denmark.........................................................8088.1068 Finland ......................................................0800.113.573 France .......................................................0800.905.805 Germany.................................................0800.1.810.111 Greece.................................................00800.353.12020 Hong Kong......................................................3002.1246 India ..........................................................1600.44.6725 Indonesia...........................................001.800.1.672.253 Ireland ........................................................1850.672253 Italy ..............................................................8008.74720 Japan ........................................................0120.155.096 Malaysia ....................................................1800.80.1837 Mexico...................................................01800.221.7321 The Netherlands .............................................0800.0827 New Zealand .............................................0508.555.215 Norway...........................................................800.14411 Philippines........................................................811.5831 Portugal.......................................................800.853.021 Singapore ................................................1800.6722.531 South Africa...............................................0800.994.225 South Korea...............................................080.2194.114 Spain............................................................900.952900 Sweden ........................................................020.798798 Switzerland................................................0800.55.2574 Taiwan.......................................................0800.672.253 Thailand ..............................................001800.441.0545 Turkey .................................................00800.353.90014 U.K. .........................................................0870.5.332200
Oracle Application Express 3.0: A Closer Look
otn.oracle.com/syndication/magcasts Scott Spendolini, CEO of Sumner Technologies, talks about the benefits of Oracle Application Express 3.0 and how it works with Oracle Database. Asking Tom: What’s New in Oracle Database 11g
otn.oracle.com/syndication/magcasts In this two-part series, Tom Kyte of Ask Tom fame talks with Oracle Magazine’s Tom Haunert about managing change, key new performance and manageability features in Oracle Database 11g, how to get ready for Oracle Database 11g, and changes in virtual location.
Phone Number
ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
11/6/07 2:51:25 PM
a t O r a c l e OTN BULLETIN
BY JU STIN KESTELYN
The Official Oracle Wiki
The Oracle community now has its own platform for collaboratively exchanging knowledge. ince the late 1990s, the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) Web site has provided the Oracle community with a means of informally interacting and exchanging knowledge with each other as well as with Oracle employees. In 2005, that formula was further enriched by a large collection of official Oracle blogs (blogs.oracle.com). However, these resources primarily contain information provided by Oracle—and that information is structured the way we like it. Now, for the first time, customers and partners can complement this “official” content with that generated completely by the OTN community—thanks to the new Oracle Wiki, sponsored by Oracle. As defined by Wikipedia (what else?), a wiki is “computer software that allows users to easily edit, create, and link Web pages.” In essence, it’s an extremely easyto-use content management system that facilitates cross-linking and collaborative editing—a Web site that you can manipulate on the fly. With the Oracle Wiki, you can create your own Web content—whether installation guides and tips, project documentation, technical notes, or anything else that’s appropriate and captures your imagination—as well as edit and post comments on pages created by others. Think of it as a free-form “Oracle parallel universe” built by customers and partners, and thus the perfect complement to the OTN Web site, Oracle discussion forums, and blogs. Create your own Oracle Wiki pages at wiki.oracle.com. CALLING ALL ORACLE APPLICATIONS ACES
Once the bastion of DBAs and developers, Oracle ACE-dom has come to the Oracle Applications community. So if you are or know an “ace” in the Oracle
Applications community (any product line), now is the time to nominate them for the Oracle ACE Program for Application Advocates. Oracle ACEs are known for their strong credentials as Oracle community enthusiasts and advocates, with candidates nominated by anyone in the Oracle Technology (and now Applications) communities. Oracle ACEs are promoted as official experts at events and on the OTN Web site, and their profiles are posted in the online Oracle ACE Directory. To qualify for the Oracle ACE Applications program, candidates should be contributing applications expertise through blogs, podcasts, speaking events, articles, or forums. Find more information and nomination forms at oracle.com/aceapps. Learn more about the Oracle ACE program (and find an Oracle ACE) at otn.oracle .com/goto/oracle-ace. ACES HOST EVENTS AROUND THE WORLD
Leave it to Oracle ACE Mogens Norgaard to provide the 2007 Miracle OpenWorld technical conference with its own beer. Aside from kegs of Miracle Beer, the 170 attendees at the annual conference (held September 27–29, 2007, near Copenhagen) were treated to technical sessions by fellow Oracle ACEs Cary Millsap, Anjo Kolk, and other big names in the Oracle Database community. At the keynote, Managing Director of Oracle Denmark Thomas Honoré spoke on the challenges of communicating to partners and customers about Oracle’s strategic plans regarding the 32 companies that had been acquired in the two years leading up to the conference. Honoré said that Oracle hadn’t really bought 32 products but rather that many technology stacks.
A little farther south was the IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology in Pune, India, founded by Oracle ACE Director (Oracle Fusion Middleware) Harshad Oak. The editor in chief at Rightrix Media and author of several Java technology books, including Oracle JDeveloper 10g: Empowering J2EE Development (Apress), Oak still finds time to spearhead this leading independent conference on Java technology. The conference held its second annual event in October 2007 in the Symbiosis Infotech Campus auditoriums in Pune. Oak and his wife, Sangeeta, also an accomplished Java programmer, hosted the conference. Learn more about the Miracle OpenWorld conference at www.miracleas .dk. Learn more about the IndicThreads conference at www.indicthreads.com. O Justin Kestelyn (justin.kestelyn@oracle.com) is the editor in chief of Oracle Technology Network.
OTN home
otn.oracle.com
OTN Headlines
otn.oracle.com/pub/news
Free software downloads otn.oracle.com/software
Documentation
otn.oracle.com/documentation
Technology Centers otn.oracle.com/tech
Podcasts
otn.oracle.com/techcasts
Technical articles
otn.oracle.com/pub/articles
Blogs
blogs.oracle.com
Discussion forums forums.oracle.com
Developer Events Calendar otn.oracle.com/events
Oracle ACE Program
otn.oracle.com/goto/oracle-ace
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a t O r a c l e BRIEFS
D I D Y O U KNOW
GREEN ISSUES GROW ON IT AGENDAS 11 percent of IT professionals surveyed say their operations address energy concerns, and 25 percent more expect to be addressing energy concerns within three years. 21 percent claim that energy conservation influenced their company’s IT purchasing decisions in the past year, and 46 percent predict that energy conservation will be a factor in the coming year. Still, the majority of companies do not have any infrastructure to monitor IT energy use. A total of 1,011 IT professionals, 81 percent of whom work in the U.S., took the online survey. Source: The 451 Group www.the451.com/special_reports/special_ report_detail.php?icid=465 CIOS SAY INTERNAL TECH SUPPORT IS UNDERSTAFFED When asked about the ratio of internal end users to technical support employees, CIOs said that the ideal ratio is 82 users for each support person. When the same CIOs were asked about the ratio of end users to support personnel in their own companies, they said it was 136:1. Things are a little better for companies with more than 1,000 employees: their actual ratio is 118:1, whereas CIOs for midsize firms said their actual ratio was 131:1. The survey polled 1,400 CIOs from U.S. companies with 100 or more employees. Source: Robert Half Technology www.rht.com VALUE OF B2B E-COMMERCE RISING AMONG COMPUTER, ELECTRONICS FIRMS 59 percent of computer and electronics companies surveyed say the value of business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce to their organizations is increasing significantly, and 38 percent say it is increasing slightly. 57 percent of survey respondents reported a significant increase in transactional volume using B2B e-commerce. The most frequently cited hurdles to greater B2B e-commerce use are internal manual process costs (86 percent), the cost of implementing data and business process standards (62 percent), and the cost of doing e-business (57 percent). Source: CompTIA comptia.org/pressroom/get_ pr.aspx?prid=1291
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NEW ORACLE APPLICATION INTEGRATION ARCHITECTURE FOR SAP INITIATIVE
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racle has unveiled the Oracle Application Integration Architecture for SAP Initiative, which provides joint Oracle/SAP customers with a standardsbased method to unify their enterprise applications and rapidly adopt serviceoriented architectures. Through this initiative, Oracle/SAP customers can build sustainable, composite business applications across Oracle, SAP, and other third-party applications. Several Oracle to SAP prebuilt integration packs, which reduce the time to deploy key cross-application business processes, are available. These include Siebel CRM to SAP, Agile PLM to SAP, Hyperion to SAP, Oracle Utilities to SAP, Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management to SAP, and PeopleSoft HR to SAP. “Oracle and SAP share the same customers, and we are pleased to offer a standards-based approach to building composite applications and prebuilt integrations for key industries,” says Ed Abbo, senior vice president of applications development, Oracle. “Oracle Application Integration Architecture for SAP extends the leadership we’ve demonstrated in delivering on the promise of a serviceoriented architecture and reinforces our commitment to maximizing value from Oracle’s existing product lines.” ORACLE RELEASES DATA MASKING PACK FOR ORACLE ENTERPRISE MANAGER
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ow shipping, Oracle Data Masking Pack for Oracle Enterprise Manager automates masking of sensitive data for secure, scalable data sharing. The pack helps customers protect sensitive data by replacing confidential or sensitive production information with realistic but scrubbed data based on masking rules. “Providing a comprehensive management solution that spans applications, middleware, and database management is the foundation for Oracle Enterprise Manager’s top-down approach. With the Oracle Data Masking Pack, companies
can now share data within and across company boundaries while addressing regulatory and privacy compliance,” says Richard Sarwal, senior vice president of systems management products, Oracle. “Through the pack’s innovative use of templates, which support applicationaware masking definitions, customers can achieve greater IT efficiencies while reducing costs.” Oracle Data Masking Pack enables regulatory compliance through consistent and rule-based application of masking formats across enterprisewide databases. It also supports a rich and extensible format library that covers a variety of mask formats. This helps ensure consistent enforcement of information security policies and allows organizations to share data quickly and scalably without violating privacy regulations. ORACLE FUSION GOVERNANCE, RISK, AND COMPLIANCE INTELLIGENCE CENTRALIZES RISK AND COMPLIANCE INFORMATION
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racle has released Oracle Fusion Governance, Risk, and Compliance Intelligence version 7.7.1, which delivers expanded risk and compliance diagnostics. Business process owners, compliance officers, and risk managers can use this tool to better understand the effectiveness of governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) programs across the enterprise. The new release combines qualitative and quantitative information from both Oracle and non-Oracle systems and presents this information in integrated dashboards and reports, allowing executives and managers to identify and focus efforts on key risk and control issues. Built on Oracle’s business intelligence technology, Oracle Fusion Governance, Risk, and Compliance Intelligence offers organizations prebuilt, role-tailored intelligence and personalized reporting and diagnostics. “To effectively gain an understanding of the status and effectiveness of GRC programs, an organization must have a way of integrating risk and control infor-
ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
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mation from different business functions and systems,” says Chris Leone, group vice president of applications strategy, Oracle. “Oracle Fusion Governance, Risk, and Compliance Intelligence delivers such an information hub for GRC, enabling business users to identify key risks and respond in real time.” ORACLE UPDATES SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGER
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racle is shipping a new release of Oracle Software Configuration Manager that collects and integrates detailed and dynamic system configuration information and enables Oracle to deliver highly automated and personalized support. It also lays the foundation for a more fully personalized, knowledge-driven, and high-value-add support environment. Based on Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Software Configuration Manager tightly integrates the capabilities of Oracle software with support processes, knowledgebases, and support tools. “We are committed to delivering the next-generation support experience through a new technology platform that delivers better information and solutions to our customers proactively,” says Juergen Rottler, executive vice president, Oracle Customer Services. “The new version of Oracle Software Configuration Manager is a significant enhancement toward delivering this new support foundation consisting of a secure, personalized system that provides easy access to configuration data.” NEW INTEGRATION PACK STREAMLINES TRADE PROMOTION PROCESS
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ow shipping, Oracle’s Siebel CRM Integration Pack for Oracle Trade Promotion Management synchronizes critical promotion, customer, and financial information. Part of Oracle Application Integration Architecture, the pack delivers prebuilt business process integration between Oracle’s Siebel CRM and Oracle E-Business Suite. Consumer goods companies can use the integra-
tion pack to create efficiencies across the enterprise and extract more value from promotions by synchronizing customer, product, and financial information across Oracle applications. “The Siebel CRM Integration Pack for Oracle Trade Promotion Management enables companies to implement a closed-loop trade promotions process that is both efficient and delivers the value and functionality they need right out of the box,” says Jose Lazares, vice president of applications development, Oracle. UPGRADE MANAGEMENT SERVICE ENABLES SEAMLESS ORACLE DATABASE UPGRADES
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racle has enhanced the Oracle Advanced Customer Services Upgrade Management Service to help customers minimize upgrade risk and increase the value of their Oracle Database investment. The offering provides a portfolio of upgrade management tools and services that help Oracle customers seamlessly move from their current Oracle Database environments to the most appropriate versions for their business. The upgrade service is a threepronged program. The first phase includes analysis, testing, and preparation to help companies understand their business and technical readiness. The second phase includes remote or onsite assistance and ongoing assessments during the actual upgrade, so any issues that come up are mitigated before they can slow or derail the upgrade process. The final step is testing the new production environment for continual operational improvement. “Our goal is continual operational improvement for the entire Oracle stack,” says Larry Abramson, senior vice president, Oracle Advanced Customer Services. “The enhancements to the Upgrade Management Service are designed, developed, and tested to help Oracle users leverage our expertise to ensure that their upgrade projects are successful.”
ORACLE ACQUIRES INTERLACE SYSTEMS
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racle has acquired Interlace Systems, a provider of strategic operation planning software. Interlace Systems software helps organizations to quickly and collaboratively combine functional processes to address strategic operational planning needs. The software uses a change-based data modeling server, connecting operational plans in an integrated model and allowing business planners across functions to rapidly change operational assumptions, reevaluate scenarios, assess business impact, and update the plan of record. “In today’s global economy, organizations need a streamlined planning process that links strategic operational plans to the financial plan of record,” says Thomas Kurian, senior vice president, Oracle Fusion Middleware. “The combination of Interlace Systems and Oracle will help enable business planners to rapidly evaluate the impact of changes to business assumptions across all plans and benefit from flexibility, speed, integrity, and accuracy, typically not found in traditional spreadsheet-based and function-specific planning solutions.” O
Oracle Application Integration Architecture for SAP Initiative oracle.com/aia
Data Masking Pack for Oracle Enterprise Manager oracle.com/enterprisemanager
Oracle Fusion Governance, Risk, and Compliance Intelligence oracle.com/grc
Oracle Software Configuration Manager oracle.com/support/premier/softwareconfiguration-manager.html
Siebel CRM Integration Pack for Oracle Trade Promotion Management oracle.com/aia
Oracle Advanced Customer Services Upgrade Management Service oracle.com/support/advanced-customer-services
Oracle and Interlace Systems oracle.com/interlacesystems
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Number of silos in which your customer data resides. Coincidentally, also the number of totally different definitions you have for “customer.”
definition — Embarcadero solutions help manage data enterprise-wide, enabling you to build and communicate an architecture of your data assets so you always know what is what, and where it is. With just one, everything gets simpler. You and your business are empowered to use and reuse reliable, relevant, and timely data across a range of platforms and storage formats. Understanding your data is finally possible, and getting a hold © 2007 Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
of the metadata is the key. Standards can be defined and enforced. Data redundancy is eliminated. It’s no coincidence that the most sophisticated solution is also the simplest. See how one gets it done. Call 415.834.3131 or visit www.embarcadero.com
a t O r a c l e ORACLE NEWS
BY R IC H SCHWERI N
Making Virtual Servers a Reality Oracle VM delivers faster, lower-cost, scalable server virtualization. s the volume of information in data centers continues to grow exponentially, IT professionals are faced with myriad challenges: increased hardware, energy, and cooling costs; real estate, facility, and space expansion costs; resource underutilization; and scalability, reliability, and availability issues. Oracle is addressing these challenges with Oracle VM, a new scalable, low-cost server virtualization product that supports both Oracle and non-Oracle applications. “Oracle VM extends Oracle’s support for grid computing, by providing the ability to virtualize within as well as across servers,” says Edward Screven, Oracle chief corporate architect. “Oracle is the only software vendor that combines the benefits of server clustering and server virtualization technologies to deliver integrated clustering, virtualization, storage, and management for grid computing.” Oracle VM enables customers to increase server utilization through virtual machine consolidation with very little overhead—saving power, floor space, and hardware costs. And with Oracle VM, customers can grow or shrink the physical server resources dedicated to an application, without downtime, through Oracle VM live migration. With Oracle VM, users can create and manage virtual machines that exist on the same physical server but behave like independent physical servers. Each virtual machine created with Oracle VM has its own virtual CPUs, network interfaces, storage, and operating system.
BOB ADLER
SUPPORT FOR MULTIPLE SYSTEMS
Oracle VM consists of Xen’s open source server software and an easy-to-use integrated, Web-browser-based management console for creating, cloning, sharing, configuring, booting, and migrating
faster deployment through preconfigured virtual machine images of Oracle Database and Oracle Enterprise Linux; and up to three times the efficiency of other server virtualization products. LOW-COST SUPPORT
Edward Screven, Chief Corporate Architect, Oracle
virtual machines running on x86- and x86-64-based systems across an enterprise, with support for Linux and Windows guest operating systems. Because Oracle VM is backed by Oracle’s world-class support organization, Oracle customers have a single point of support for their entire virtualization environments, including the Linux operating system, Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, and Oracle Applications—all of which are certified with Oracle VM. “With Oracle VM, customers can respond more rapidly to business changes, increase return on investment, and reduce lifetime total cost of ownership,” says Screven. “Oracle VM brings enterprise-class support and backing to server virtualization, giving customers the confidence to deploy virtualized solutions.” He adds that among its many features and benefits, Oracle VM offers simplified installation, with single install, patching, and upgrading for both Oracle VM and Oracle Enterprise Linux;
“With Oracle VM, customers can deploy server virtualization for a fraction of the cost of using other vendor products,” explains Screven. Oracle VM software is free to download, and pricing for enterprise-class support for Oracle VM is on a per-system basis, with 24/7 support for a system with one or two CPUs priced at $499 per year per system and a system with unlimited CPUs priced at $999 per year per system. Oracle On Demand, which provides a portfolio of applications on a subscription or managed basis, is offering Oracle VM server virtualization within the Oracle On Demand Managed Services Grid. This will enable Oracle to better optimize each Oracle On Demand customer’s configuration, more fully harness server capabilities, maintain operational enhancements deployed over the last several years, and introduce new benefits—not to mention gaining significant savings in terms of space, power, and cooling. O Rich Schwerin (rich.schwerin@oracle.com) is the Linux, virtualization, and open source product marketing manager with Oracle technology marketing.
LEARN more about Oracle VM oracle.com/virtualization
DOWNLOAD Oracle VM edelivery.oracle.com/oraclevm
READ about Oracle VM technology otn.oracle.com/tech/virtualization
LISTEN to an Oracle VM podcast
streaming.oracle.com/ebn/podcasts/otn/6084482.mp3
ORACLE MAGAZINE
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a t O r a c l e INTERVIEW
BY C A ROLINE KVITKA
Web 2.0 Meets the Enterprise
Oracle WebCenter provides a platform for integrating Web 2.0 with enterprise applications.
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Vince Casarez, Oracle Vice President of Product Management (Oracle WebCenter)
I want to get started with those, but I am a little exposed if I put it out on the Web as a service. I need to have a little more control, so that it ties into my security infrastructure, so that I can restrict access to certain areas for people and teams, so that they can have their own private area to evolve their designs and plans.” We are pulling those types of Web 2.0 services into the enterprise with an integrated platform, Oracle WebCenter, so that when enterprises choose to deploy them to different groups, they don’t have to worry about different departments choosing different services on the Web for doing the same type of work. Customers can get started with this platform that plugs into their existing enterprise architecture and allows them to use these services together to provide social networking or enable better interaction between users and their information. Oracle Magazine: Tell us more about how Oracle WebCenter supports the integration of Web 2.0 with business processes. Casarez: With Oracle WebCenter 10g
Release 3, customers can start to leverage the most-popular Web 2.0 services within their enterprise today, including online discussions, enterprise wikis for collaboration around different projects, and a Session Initiation Protocol–based presence and instant messaging platform that lets you find experts in the organization in order to resolve issues quickly. In addition, these can be paired with content integrated from different backend sources like Oracle Content Database Suite, EMC Documentum, Lotus Notes, and Microsoft Sharepoint. In this way, users can assemble all this information in the context of the enterprise applications and do things like discuss the latest sales proposal, or create a wiki to work on the latest marketing plan, or contact the best person to help resolve a customer issue. Oracle Magazine: What are customers doing today with Oracle WebCenter in terms of Web 2.0? Casarez: Quite a few customers have started to use Oracle WebCenter as an aggregation point across all of their enterprise applications. They want to be able to bring multiple custom and siloed applications together in an aggregated view for their business users. They are also adding a richer set of interactions into their existing applications. Oracle WebCenter provides them that UI to pull in enterprise application content, business intelligence content, business processes, and Web content, so that users can get an overall view of what’s going on in the business and make better decisions moving forward. O
LISTEN to the podcast
otn.oracle.com/syndication/magcasts
LEARN more about Oracle WebCenter webcenter.oracle.com
BOB ADLER
oday’s consumers expect Web 2.0 capabilities—from blogs to podcasts to community—in the Web sites that they frequent. Now many organizations are bringing those same Web 2.0 capabilities into their enterprise applications. Vince Casarez, Oracle vice president of product management with a focus on Oracle WebCenter, sat down with Oracle Magazine’s Caroline Kvitka to talk about Web 2.0 in the enterprise and Oracle WebCenter. The following is an excerpt from that interview. Download a podcast of the full interview at otn.oracle.com/ syndication/magcasts. Oracle Magazine: Most of our readers are familiar with some type of Web 2.0 capability. However, integrating Web 2.0 with business processes is still a relatively young concept. Could you start off by defining Web 2.0 in the enterprise and talk about the benefits? Casarez: If we look at the evolution of the Web, there was Web 1.0, which is just publishing content; then Web 1.5, which is enabling sites to provide services. Now Web 2.0 is that pairing of information with some social networking elements that allow people to interact together. We see people wanting to take Web 2.0 services and combine them with their enterprise application information in order to get a better picture of what they are talking about to their customers and partners, or to drive internal innovations. If you can pair Web 2.0 experiences with transactional applications, it makes it easier to make better decisions. Oracle Magazine: How difficult is it to incorporate Web 2.0 into business processes today? Casarez: All of these services are available today, hosted on the Web. Organizations can get started very easily. But, we hear customers say, “I like wikis, I like blogs.
ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
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a t O r a c l e INTERVIEW
BY JEFF ERI CKSO N
Optimized for Data Warehousing
Oracle and partners provide preconfigured hardware and software for data warehousing.
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Ray Roccaforte, Oracle Vice President of Database Development for Data Warehousing, Analytics, and Business Intelligence
that scan rates are very high and there’s enough bandwidth to get the data to the processors at a fast enough rate to keep those processors busy. Oracle Magazine: What kinds of customers is the Oracle Optimized Warehouse best suited for? Roccaforte: There’s a whole class of customers that we see coming on board here, as data warehousing has become much more popular. Today, everybody wants a data warehouse, because that’s where you do your analytics. But there’s not as much expertise available compared to the number of data warehouses in the world, so there are a lot of emerging customers now who want something that’s ready to use outof-the-box. They don’t want to design everything from scratch. And those are the customers that we’re targeting with Oracle Optimized Warehouse. Oracle Magazine: You’ve stated that Oracle Database 11g, which is at the heart of the Oracle Optimized Warehouse Initiative,
will fundamentally change BI. Tell us more about that. Roccaforte: One of the things that I’m very excited about is the integration in Oracle Database 11g between our online analytical processing (OLAP) technology and our materialized views technology, which is the classical approach to managing aggregated data in the Oracle data warehouse. This is profound because the basic operations of BI are dominated by aggregations. Materialized views allow customers to precompute and store the aggregations that they’re interested in. So at runtime they don’t have to do the aggregation, and queries return orders of magnitude faster. But it’s really difficult for customers to create all the materialized views they need. Even if they could create them, it would be very costly to keep them refreshed. The revolutionary step that we’ve taken is to integrate the materialized views technology with our OLAP cube technology. An Oracle OLAP 11g cube is a collection of thousands, or tens of thousands, of individual aggregations, all managed as a single object, stored compactly, and refreshed as a single object. By marrying these two technologies, we get the benefits of both. The precomputed aggregations in the cube give great query performance on a much larger set of queries, and the maintenance is handled by the Oracle database, which removes that burden from the customer. O Jeff Erickson is a senior editor with Oracle Publishing.
LISTEN to the podcast
otn.oracle.com/syndication/magcasts
LEARN more about the Oracle Optimized Warehouse Initiative oracle.com/goto/oowi
BOB ADLER
ay Roccaforte, Oracle vice president of database development for data warehousing, analytics, and business intelligence (BI), sat down with Oracle Magazine’s Jeff Erickson to talk about data growth and the Oracle Optimized Warehouse. The following is an excerpt from that interview. Download a podcast of the full interview at otn .oracle.com/syndication/magcasts. Oracle Magazine: Tell us about data growth and how it contributed to the Oracle Optimized Warehouse. Roccaforte: Everybody’s familiar with Moore’s Law, which says that processor speeds are doubling every 18 months. But with those remarkable changes in processor speeds, why isn’t our work productivity improving at a similar rate or at least at a more-rapid rate? The answer is that data volumes are actually growing at a faster rate than Moore’s Law. Ten years ago, it was unusual to see a data warehouse of 50 gigabytes. Today people are running Oracle data warehouses of hundreds of terabytes. So even though computers are getting much faster, computing is actually slowing down relative to the amount of data. This is going to have profound implications on how data is going to be managed and analyzed in the future. One of the biggest implications is that with data volumes at such large levels, you really need to be able to scan data very rapidly, and that is what led to the Oracle Optimized Warehouse. In the Oracle Optimized Warehouse, we present the customer with an out-of-the-box, balanced configuration that is optimized for data warehousing. It’s a complete data warehouse solution from Oracle and hardware partners including Dell Inc., IBM, and Sun. Oracle Database is preinstalled and preconfigured. The hardware is designed and tested to be balanced so
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c o m m u n i t y COMMITMENT
BY A A RO N L A Z E N BY
Formula for Success
NBPTS
Oracle promotes teacher training to improve math and science education. inus Pauling’s molecular biology. AVERAGE NOT ENOUGH Board Certification. Oracle awarded the Gordon E. Moore’s oft-cited Law. NBPTS a US$1 million Commitment Merely average performance in math and Grace Hopper’s UNIVAC compiler. Grant to create the Oracle Professional science is not enough to drive the next Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic Development Initiative to Improve Math generation of IT innovation, so Oracle domes. Such high-profile breakthroughs Education, designed to identify the chalexecutives have developed a particular by American scientists belie the truth lenges teachers face in teaching math interest in this issue. “Long-term investabout the state of math and science and to create a collection of online and ment in student math and science skills education in the United States. In fact, in-person professional development is good for the economy in general, and according to a 2003 survey by the sessions. Through lectures, roundtable it is good for Oracle in particular,” says National Center for Education Statistics, discussions, video presentations, and Rosalie Gann, director, Oracle Global the performance of American software tools, the initiative students is average, compared will encourage teachers to a to other industrialized coundevelop a deeper understanding tries—ranking behind England, of effective math teaching pracSingapore, and the Russian tices, based on National Board Federation but ahead of Italy, Certification math standards. Scotland, and the Philippines. To determine where math Teacher turnover is one of and science teachers are experithe key factors influencing the encing challenges, NBPTS anaquality of education in U.S. lysts mined an Oracle database elementary and middle schools. containing four years of certiAccording to the National fication entries. These findings Commission on Teaching and will be analyzed by education America’s Future, almost half experts and board-certified of America’s new teachers leave teachers to create the core curthe profession during their first riculum behind the initiative, five years. This brain drain which is scheduled for rollout puts further stress on limited among math teachers by the Raising student aptitude is the goal of Oracle’s partnership with the National Board school district budgets, thwarts for Professional Teaching Standards. start of the 2009 school year. the introduction of new teach“Research shows that ing methods, and prevents schools from National Board Certified Teachers have Corporate Citizenship. “Research shows preparing for impending retirements of proven that they know their subject that promoting professional development teachers. So students suffer. matter and can successfully teach it,” says plays a direct role in improving student “It is a big concern,” says Mark Ellis, Joseph A. Aguerrebere, president and performance—and we’re happy to find a assistant professor of secondary education partner that shares our concerns.” CEO, NBPTS. “Working with Oracle, we at California State University, Fullerton. hope to elevate the performance of math In 2007 Oracle teamed up with the “One of the reasons people leave the proeducators and math students.” O National Board for Professional Teaching fession is that they end up feeling sort of Standards (NBPTS), an independent nonisolated, that they are stuck out there on profit organization dedicated to advancAaron Lazenby is a director with Oracle Publishing. their own, often without adequate prepaing the quality of teaching and learning ration for what they should know and be through professional standards, to create able to do.” Ellis, himself a former middle a professional development program to Oracle’s Commitment oracle.com/commitment school math teacher and a National Board reduce attrition among math and science Certified Teacher, believes that National teachers in the U.S. by connecting teachNational Board for Professional Teaching Standards Board Certification could help reverse ers with their peers, providing teachwww.nbpts.org troubling trends in teacher attrition. ing resources, and promoting National
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c o m m u n i t y PARTNER NEWS
b o o k BEAT The Berkeley DB Book By Himanshu Yadava Apress Apress.com ISBN: 1590596722
ORACLE AND WIPRO PROVIDE MANAGED IDENTITY SERVICES
This practical guide covers the intricacies of Oracle Berkeley DB, a family of open source, embeddable databases. The book goes into depth on complex design issues that are only touched on in the footnotes of the Berkeley DB reference manual. It explains the technology at a higher level and also covers the internals, providing generous code and design examples. Author Himanshu Yadava provides a developer’s perspective on design issues in Berkeley DB–based applications and offers design options for specific conditions. He also includes a look at fault tolerance and high-availability frameworks and offers extensive coverage on replication, distributed transactions, and environment recovery. Yadava is a software developer and consultant through his company, BitSeer.
Oracle Database 11g SQL By Jason Price Oracle Press www.oraclepress.com ISBN: 0071498508 In Oracle Database 11g SQL, author Jason Price teaches readers to access Oracle databases through SQL statements and to construct PL/SQL programs. The book explains how to retrieve and modify database information, use Oracle SQL*Plus and Oracle SQL Developer, work with database objects, write PL/SQL programs, and more. Readers will find in-depth coverage of the latest SQL features and tools, performance optimization techniques, advanced queries, Java support, and XML. Readers will learn to take advantage of Oracle Database 11g features such as PIVOT, UNPIVOT, and flashback archives. With practical examples, code samples, and programming tips, this book provides everything you need to master SQL, whether you are a technical manager or consultant, business user, database administrator, or developer. No prior knowledge of Oracle Database, SQL, or PL/SQL is assumed. Price is a freelance consultant and former product manager at Oracle. He is an Oracle Certified DBA and Application Developer.
Look for Oracle books at oracle.com/ technology/bookstore
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C
ertified Advantage Partner Wipro has partnered with Oracle to provide Oracle Identity and Access Management Suite as a managed service. This new offering allows companies to outsource the user management, help desk, and maintenance elements of identity management to Wipro. These services are provided at a single monthly cost that covers product licenses, implementation, and maintenance. The offering is delivered on two concurrent tracks. A Transition and Operation Support track evaluates the extent of automation and help-desk call volume, while an Identity Management Automation track builds out an automated solution based on products in the Oracle Identity and Access Management Suite. Wipro migrates manual tasks to Oracle-powered automated processes over time; once the system is configured, customers can leverage proven security templates and toolkits to take advantage of repetitive tasks such as on-boarding identities and integrating SarbanesOxley applications.
PROMERO OFFERS VOICE OVER IP CALL CENTER SOLUTIONS
P
romero, an Oracle Certified Partner and a provider of Oracle Contact Center Anywhere virtual call center solution, now offers a hosted, virtual call center solution using third-party Voice over IP (VoIP) carriers. Promero’s hosted configuration, coupled with VoIP media gateways from Quintum, has been successfully deployed with VoIP carriers including Nexogy, Packet8, XO Communications, and Qwest. The use of virtual phone numbers and internetbased voice traffic enables customers to take advantage of free or low-cost long distance, advanced calling features offered by VoIP providers, virtual remote employee access, and low total cost of ownership. Oracle Contact Center Anywhere— formerly known as Telephony@Work
CallCenterAnywhere—is an integrated, multichannel contact center platform that merges traditional phone calls with e-mail, chat, fax, and Web callback. “The important benefits of this offering are high voice quality, virtual access, stability, enhanced inbound/outbound calling features, and very low operational cost,” says Gregg Troyanowski, president of Promero. CENTENNIAL SOFTWARE DELIVERS INTEGRATED IT ASSET MANAGEMENT
C
entennial Software, a developer of IT asset discovery and audit solutions, has released IT asset management products for use with Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise. Called Centennial Discovery Connector, the products enable Oracle IT Asset Management customers to use IT asset inventory data from Centennial’s IT audit solution, Centennial Discovery. “By integrating Centennial Discovery with Oracle IT Asset Management solutions, organizations have the ability to implement a true best-of-breed solution with class-leading ERP [enterprise resource planning] solutions,” says Andy Burton, CEO of Centennial Software. Centennial Discovery includes a hardware and software audit for all computers and network devices, including smartphones, printers, and wireless access points. Combined with Oracle’s IT Asset Management solutions, Centennial Discovery helps to control IT costs, maintain regulatory compliance, comply with software licenses, and provide better IT service.
ORACLE OFFERS BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING PARTNER PROGRAM
O
racle now offers Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) service provider partners the complete Oracle stack (applications, database, and middleware) under the Oracle BPO Go-to-Market Initiative. The initiative includes programs and services to help partners develop and promote solutions that complement Oracle Business
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BearingPoint Puts Customers on the Road to Fusion
PARTNER SPOTLIGHT
O
racle and BearingPoint have launched the Roadmap to Application (RTA) strategy, a program to help customers build a business and IT strategy that aligns with Oracle’s application and technology landscape, including Oracle Fusion. The program helps customers create informationcentric, role-based, intelligent, and industry-specific IT systems that use the best components of Oracle’s application portfolio. The RTA strategy is not to “rip and replace” existing systems but to identify options that take advantage of the customer’s current platform while considering the evolving technology landscape, the customer’s business goals, and Oracle’s road map. Through a series of focused evaluations of key corporate initiatives and trouble spots, BearingPoint consultants build a three- to five-year plan for the extension, evolution, and sometimes revolution, of corporate systems. Ongoing health checks and updates are also part of the program, allowing for changes in business conditions while maintaining consistent progress toward program goals. Process Outsourcing in selected product, market, and solution channels. Partners who qualify can brand their services with a “BPO Powered by Oracle” logo. SOLUTION BEACON AND ORACLE DELIVER ADVERTISING INDUSTRY SOLUTION
O
racle Certified Advantage Partner Solution Beacon has created an advertising industry–specific technology solution called Silk Paradigm that integrates with Oracle Media and Entertainment solutions. Silk Paradigm allows advertising companies to estimate, manage, and control the processes and costs related to campaigns. “The advertising industry continues to be challenged in its management of advertising and marketing campaigns that include many dynamic activities, creative teams across disparate geographies, and collaboration across campaign agencies,” says David Murphy, chief strategy officer at Solution Beacon and former executive vice president at advertising and marketing company Young and Rubicam. “Automation of this process and real-time performance monitoring
“[The RTA strategy] answers important customer concerns about integrating IT systems, how new IT elements affect the entire system enterprisewide, how to get technology and applications into sync, and how to make decisions now that will make sense for your future needs,” says Robert Youngblood, managing director of Oracle technology solutions at BearingPoint. On the road to Oracle Fusion Applications, Oracle Fusion Architecture and Oracle Fusion Middleware—both available now—address today’s business challenges, including increasing the capacity for growth and change; improving insight into business operations and strategic drivers; mitigating risk and driving compliance; and enhancing the profitability and productivity of connections with customers, partners, and workers. Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies are compatible with current Oracle applications and many non-Oracle products. In addition, Oracle’s acquisition strategy has brought open standards to many new technologies and strengthened the prospect for customers to create a more dynamic infrastructure.
will have a positive impact on profit margins and the quality of operations.” Solution Beacon’s Silk Paradigm integrates budgeting, scheduling, and actuals to provide real-time information about advertising campaigns. It uses business intelligence and a powerful research engine to improve analysis of the client’s products, competition, target demographic audience, media spend, ratings, buying trends, and market conditions. CPSG MERGES WITH PARTNERS CONSULTING SERVICES
C
PSG, an Oracle Certified Partner, has merged with Partners Consulting Services (PCS), an Oracle Partner, to create a national company that provides Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Fusion Middleware solutions. CPSG delivers service-oriented architecture and identity and access management solutions. PCS has 25 years of experience with Oracle solutions, including Oracle’s PeopleSoft and Oracle E-Business Suite. The companies will maintain operations in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Irvine,
Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. “We understand how to get the most out of this platform and believe that our combined capabilities . . . will make CPSG a clear choice when it comes to implementing Oracle technologies,” says Jim Guinn, vice president of enterprise architecture for CPSG. O
Wipro
oracle.com/partnerships/si/wipro
Promero
www.promero.com/call_center_software/ call_center_software.asp
Centennial Software
www.centennial-software.com/oracle
BearingPoint
www.bearingpoint.com/oracle
Oracle BPO Go-to-Market Initiative oracle.com/partners/home/bi/global/bpo/ unauth/index.html
Solution Beacon
www.solutionbeacon.com
CPSG
www.cpsg-inc.com
Partners Consulting Services www.partnersconsulting.com
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c o m m u n i t y PEER-TO-PEER
BY B la ir C a m pbell
Favorite Things Oracle ADF, Oracle JDeveloper, and Oracle Application Server top the list for these Oracle ACEs. Chris Ostrowski What’s your favorite tool or technique on the job? Oracle
JDeveloper combined with Oracle Application Development Framework [Oracle ADF] is a phenomenal piece of software. The latest version—10g Release 3—makes creating portlets incredibly easy. For developing sophisticated, Web-enabled, Oracle-based applications, no other tool comes close. What would you like to see Oracle, as a company, do better? Oracle
Application Server technologies are changing so fast, it’s difficult for many clients to fully understand all the different versions and what’s included in each. A more clearly defined road map of Oracle Application Server technologies would be invaluable. If you were going to the International Space Station for six months and could only take one Oracle reference book, what would it be? Oracle
peerSPECS
Oracle ADF. I’m developing and posting sample applications using this technology on my blog [www .andrejusb.blogspot.com], which has helped me to become recognized in the technical community.
Company: IBM Global Business Services, a business and technology services provider Job title/description: Technical consultant, responsible for consulting on Oracle projects, resolving development issues, and designing software architectures Location: Vilnius, Lithuania Oracle credentials: Oracle Certified DBA (Oracle Database 10g ), with three years of experience using Oracle products
Oracle ACE otn.oracle.com/community/ oracle_ace
Jacco Landlust
Job title/description: Technical management consultant, responsible for maintaining a strong working knowledge of all core Oracle technologies
Tell us about your current project. I’m contracted out to ISC, the national information and communications technologies company for Dutch police and fire departments and other public services. My main job is to guide applications into production, so the company’s local DBAs can support these applications. I’m also responsible for maintaining its high-availability environment for national services, which runs Oracle Real Application Clusters [Oracle RAC] and Oracle Application Server. I’ve come to have the most interest in troubleshooting application server problems. What’s your favorite tool or technique on the job? Since my main job is analyzing what’s wrong with software created by others, my favorite tool is a UNIX kit. Even on Windows, I install the GNU toolkit all the time. This peerSPECS Company: Desyde B.V., a software helps me analyze log files, debug development company file handles, and much more.
Location: Lakewood, Colorado Oracle credentials: Oracle Certified DBA (Oracle9i ), with 20 years of experience using Oracle products
Oracle ACE otn.oracle.com/community/ oracle_ace
Andrejus Baranovskis How did you get started in IT? After earning my bachelor’s degree, I joined a local company that’s an Oracle Certified . Advantage Partner—an IT service provider called Informacines Technologijos. My first IT project, which involved defining database schema as well as developing SQL statements for location information management, was based on Oracle Spatial. This wasn’t accidental—from very early on it was my goal to work with Oracle technology.
be a successful developer, you shouldn’t be afraid to ask ques-
What technology has most changed your life? Oracle JDeveloper with
peerSPECS
Company: TUSC, an Oracle consulting firm
professionals are lucky to have so many outstanding books to choose from. Kevin Loney’s Oracle Database 10g: The Complete Reference gives the reader both quality and quantity.
What advice do you have about how to get into Web and database development? If you want to
tions. Although if we’re talking about forums, it’s highly possible that someone has already asked your question. So don’t be lazy— search before you ask!
You’ve taken an Oracle University class—how was that experience?
The class I took is mandatory for the DBA Oracle Certified Professional exam, but I didn’t enroll for that purpose. Since all five students were experienced DBAs, we dove right into Oracle Database 10g new features and even built an Oracle RAC cluster. ■
Job title/description: DBA, partially responsible for maintaining Desyde B.V.’s internal systems and all UNIX/Linux systems administration duties, as well as troubleshooting for customers Location: Deventer, the Netherlands Length of time using Oracle products: Seven years
Oracle ACE otn.oracle.com/community/ oracle_ace
oracle magazine
m ay / J u n e 2 0 0 7
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54% of Profit Readers Make Buying Decisions Based on Third-Party Ads They See in the Magazine!
As a Profit reader, you know we’re all about the business of technology. From small and medium businesses, Oracle Fusion, vertical market developments in BI, and analysis by Oracle executives and industry luminaries, Profit illuminates the business impact of technology through customer features, executive interviews, and business strategy articles. Executive managers, line-of-business VPs/managers, and IT VPs/managers and consultants read Profitt for the same reasons you do: •
84% say reading Profitt helps them make better strategic decisions
•
81% go online to read more about products and services they see in Profit
•
79% consider Profitt a must-read
•
75% say reading Profitt shows them Oracle understands the challenges they face
•
66% say Profitt provides information they can’t find in other magazines
•
54% say they make buying decisions based on third-party ads in the magazine
If your company’s products or services are purchased by executive managers, line-of-business VPs/managers, and IT VPs/managers and consultants running Oracle applications, you need to promote your products or services in Profit.
PROFIT…our name says it all! For detailed information on how your company will benefit from our print and interactive go-to-market programs, contact your representative below.
07002768_Profit_House_Full_Ad_ƒ.1 1
Northeast U.S./Canada David and Ann Schissler +1.508.394.4026 schissler@comcast.net
Mid-Atlantic/Southeast Dawn Becker +1.732.772.0160 dbeck71@optonline.com
Northwest/Central Tom Cometa +1.510.339.2427 thomas.cometa@sbcglobal.net
Southwest/LAD Shaun Mehr +1.949.923.1660 shaun@sprocketmedia.com
EMEA/APAC Mark Makinney +44 0 1273 774341 mark.makinney@oracle.com
Associate Publisher Kyle Walkenhorst +1.323.340.8585 kyle@sprocketmedia.com
6/26/07 6 /2 /26/07 6/0 /07 8:20:39 AM
INFORMATION
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COMES HOME BY DAV ID B AUM
ORACLE DATABASE 11g MANAGES ALL YOUR ENTERPRISE DATA.
very business depends on the ability to capture, analyze, and share information efficiently. The need to establish unified, enterprisewide policies for managing this information is leading IT departments to Oracle Database 11g, which can manage all types of data—from traditional business information to office documents, XML, and both 2-D and 3-D spatial information. These capabilities are making Oracle Database 11g a popular choice to power transaction processing, data warehousing, and content management applications. “Our objective with Oracle Database
PHIL SALTONSTALL
11g is to provide a single platform to store, manage, back up, and secure all your data,” says Vishu Krishnamurthy, Oracle’s senior director of SQL, text, and XML development. “We’re delivering a single ORACLE MAGAZINE
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“Oracle SecureFiles enables the customer to manage unstructured data in the same way as structured data. It gives the same security, backup, recovery, encryption, flashback technology, locking, clustering technology, partitioning. . . . All these mature database features can now be brought to bear on all types of data.” — Richard J. Niemiec, CEO, TUSC repository for both data and metadata, much of which is currently stored in file systems and content management systems and on unmanaged PCs.” AN EVOLVING ARCHITECTURE
In addition to improvements in performance, scalability, availability, security, and management efficiency, Oracle Database 11g includes many new features that support all your enterprise data. For example, Oracle Database 11g’s Spatial option provides native semantic technology, which identifies and creates connections between disparate pieces of data—such as a company’s customers, orders, and products—creating new, actionable insights. These capabilities are of particular importance to Metatomix, a leading provider of semantic solutions in the government, financial services, manufacturing, and life sciences sectors. “I’m not just looking for solutions to relational data storage but for a reliable repository for all types of information,” says Colin Britton, chief technology officer at Metatomix. “With an Oracle database, we can manage our data, our configuration
information, and all of our code in a single repository. We get all the benefits of backup, management, failover, clustering, and so forth, without supporting different strategies for different parts of the application.” Metatomix also favors Oracle Database 11g for its native Resource Description Framework (RDF) storage capabilities. “Oracle supplies a semantic layer within the database, and Oracle is the only database vendor that offers native support for RDF datatypes and OWL [Web ontology language] ontologies,” adds Britton. “This makes it a good technical option for us and our customers.” For example, a U.K.-based financial services organization hired Metatomix to speed up data-intensive tasks related to the processing of mutual fund trades. The bank needed a business intelligence application that could understand the meaning of the information it was gathering, which led the company to semantic technology. Britton says that the Oracle-based solution helps this financial services organization verify fund prices and identify data anomalies. “Financial services firms have massive amounts of
PROVIDING BETTER DATA MANAGEMENT Until recently, data storage was managed by individual company policy. However, new government regulations and guidelines such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA in the United States and the Data Privacy Directive in the European Union now specify increased data storage, retention, privacy, and protection requirements. As a consequence, the amount of information a company must store has vastly expanded. The challenge for companies is to understand how their data evolves, determine how it grows, monitor how its usage changes over time, and decide how long it should survive. Richard J. Niemiec, CEO of TUSC, favors Oracle Database 11g for its ability to store massive amounts of information. “We’re in the midst of a data explosion, and most companies are seeing their data needs rise exponentially,” he says. “Oracle Database 11g can store 8 exabytes of information—8 million terabytes.” Oracle Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) can help solve these challenges of data management and storage. Oracle Information
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Lifecycle Management Assistant helps administrators design and implement an ILM strategy that aligns partitioned data to appropriate storage tiers, keeping more data online for longer in a cost-efficient manner. Oracle Database 11g offers advanced compression and partitioning capabilities that enable companies to implement an ILM strategy using multitier storage. The data that companies must store on average triples every two years. Oracle Advanced Compression in Oracle Database 11g helps organizations reduce disk storage requirements, compressing data stored on-disk. It can lower costs by reducing disk space requirements for any type of data, including structured and unstructured data such as documents, images, and multimedia. Oracle Advanced Compression can be used with any type of database application without application changes, and disk space savings will cascade throughout the data center. Oracle Partitioning enables tables and indexes to be split into smaller, more manage-
able components. Oracle Database 11g offers several partitioning methods, including range, interval, reference, and list, in addition to composite partitions of two methods such as order date (range) and region (list) or region (list) and customer type (list). This functionality enables faster query performance and administrative operations by executing at the smaller partition level. Oracle Partitioning doesn’t require any application changes, and Oracle Database 11g offers a partitioning advisor to help administrators implement the right partitioning methodology for their business model. “Whether you call it unstructured data, enterprise information, or content management, it’s all about creating a richer experience for the end user, both on the internet and within the enterprise,” says Vishu Krishnamurthy, Oracle’s senior director of SQL, text, and XML development. “It used to take a lot of coding to combine various types of information. By consolidating data in a single repository, Oracle Database 11g enables a truly integrated information platform.”
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of LOB performance, Oracle Database 11g includes Oracle SecureFiles, a new and improved storage infrastructure for LOB datatypes. Oracle partner TUSC has been working with a large government client testing Oracle SecureFiles. Based in Chicago, TUSC is a consulting firm that helps companies optimize their investments in Oracle technology and applications. “Oracle SecureFiles enables the customer to manage unstructured data in the same way as structured data,” says Richard J. Niemiec, CEO of TUSC and former president of the International Oracle User Group. “It gives the same security, backup, recovery, encryption, flashback technology, locking, clustering technology, partitioning. . . . All these mature database features can now be brought to bear on all types of data.” While some companies have had reservations about putting unstructured information into a relational database for performance reasons, Niemiec believes that the new functionality of Oracle Database 11g with Oracle SecureFiles can resolve these concerns. “Oracle SecureFiles uses entirely different technology for locking, space management, and disk storage than former versions of the database,” he says. “Oracle SecureFiles is not only much faster than traditional LOBs, it’s faster than a file system. This is one of the most compelling reasons to move to Oracle SecureFiles and Oracle Database 11g.”
SNAPSHOTS Metatomix www.metatomix.com Location: Boston, Massachusetts Industry: High technology Employees: 46 Oracle products: Oracle Database, Oracle Application Server
Rich Niemiec, CEO of TUSC, says that new functionality of Oracle Database 11g with Oracle SecureFiles can resolve concerns that companies might have had about putting unstructured information into a relational database.
data, governed by complex business processes and analytics,” he says. “Semantic technology offers insight whenever exceptions occur, and Oracle has the right database platform for maintaining the information.”
ANDREA MANDEL
REDUCING PERFORMANCE OVERHEAD
Organizations see the wisdom in consolidating information into a professionally managed database; however, there have been concerns about the performance overhead required to store and retrieve large objects (LOBs). To address the issue
TUSC www.tusc.com Location: Chicago, Illinois Industry: Professional services Employees: 180 Oracle products: Oracle Database, Oracle Applications, Oracle Application Server, Oracle Developer Suite, Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Portal Warner Music Group www.wmg.com Location: New York City Industry: Entertainment Employees: 4,000 (2006) Oracle products: Oracle Database, Oracle XML DB, Oracle SQL*Loader
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineer Research and Development Center/Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory www.erdc.usace.army.mil Location: Hanover, New Hampshire Industry: Government Employees: 2,000 Oracle products: Oracle Database, Oracle Application Server, Oracle Portal, Oracle Web Services, Oracle Spatial
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During their testing, TUSC found out that Oracle SecureFiles was 22 times faster than LOBs when reusing deleted space. Similarly, TUSC saw PL/SQL reads as 6 times faster, and SQL*Loader operation as nearly 3 times faster. “All of the performance issues that might have prevented people from storing unstructured content in the database have been addressed,” Niemiec says. A REMODELED STOREHOUSE FOR XML
As a markup language capable of describing all kinds of information—including structured, unstructured, and semistructured data—XML appeals to many types of organizations. Oracle was the first commercial relational database vendor to offer native XML capabilities within a relational database. “Oracle made XML a fundamental datatype with Oracle9i Database Release 2,” says Oracle’s Krishnamurthy. Oracle Database’s XML capabilities caught the ear of Don Janik, senior technical manager at Warner Music Group, home to well-known record labels such as Asylum, Atlantic, and Elektra. Last year, Warner Music Group implemented the XML DB feature in Oracle Database 10g to collect, validate, and track critical sales information from its business partners. The music company has also tested the new XML capabilities in Oracle Database 11g. Warner Music Group looked at various solutions for handling XML data. They chose the Oracle solution because they like the way Oracle implements structured storage. “Based on the XML schema, it is not necessary for Oracle XML DB to store XML tag names when storing the contents of XML docu-
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ments,” Janik says. “This can significantly reduce the storage space required.” Oracle XML DB is commonly used for storing, retrieving, and managing massive volumes of XML data. XML documents can be stored either as character large objects for unstructured and semistructured documents such as Microsoft Word documents, or as object-relational datatypes for structured documents such as purchase orders. This functionality enables XML documents to be accessed using industry standard SQL, XML, and file/folder interfaces. Moreover, says Oracle’s Krishnamurthy, Oracle Database 11g introduces a new storage representation and indexing method for XML data: Binary XML datatype and XMLIndex. Binary XML improves performance and storage efficiency. In combination with XMLIndex, it can provide up to a 15-fold performance improvement when accessing XML documents. Warner Music Group uses Oracle XML DB to expedite the loading and validation of digitally formatted sales information. In one test, Janik’s team processed 50,000 sales transactions in 15 minutes. This is partly due to the unique architecture of Oracle Database. When an XML schema is registered, Oracle XML DB generates a set of SQL objects that correspond to complex types defined in that schema. XPath expressions, sent to Oracle XML DB functions, are translated to SQL access methods that operate directly against the underlying objects. “By abstracting the storage model through the use of the XMLType datatype, and providing a set of operators that use XPath to perform operations against XML documents, Oracle
PETER STEMBER
Don Janik, senior technical manager at Warner Music Group, likes Oracle Database for its XML capabilities. “It is not necessary for Oracle XML DB to store XML tag names when storing the contents of XML documents. This can significantly reduce the storage space required,” Janik says.
ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
11/12/07 11:34:23 AM
“Oracle XML DB lets us switch between structured and unstructured storage and to experiment with different forms of structured storage without affecting the application.” —Don Janik, Senior Technical Manager, Warner Music Group XML DB lets us switch between structured and unstructured storage and to experiment with different forms of structured storage without affecting the application,” Janik says. This is particularly important as the music industry prepares for compliance with Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) standards for electronic messages. The RIAA is proposing use of the Digital Data Exchange XML-based message formats for processing payments and royalties among music service providers, artists, publishers, and composers. Because of the innovative work being done by Janik and his
team, Warner Music Group will be well positioned to take advantage of these new standards. INTEGRATING SPATIAL DATA
Scientists working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rely on Oracle to store all kinds of data, including geospatial and multimedia information. “Oracle Database 11g helps us pull together and process very large sets of both unstructured and traditional structured data,” says Michael Smith, a physical scientist who
Oracle Database 11g: Storing More Data Oracle Database 11g offers Oracle Information Lifecycle Management Assistant, Oracle Partitioning, and Oracle Advanced Compression to enable information lifecycle management that streamlines data management, improves performance for mission-critical systems, and reduces storage costs.
STEVE LYONS
Data Types
With Oracle Database 11g, store all your data, including relational, XML, binary XML, 2D and 3D spatial, semantic, DICOM, RFID, e-mail, multimedia, spreadsheets, and documents.
Active Data (5–10%)
Less Active Data (30 –35%)
Historical Data (60%)
The high-peformance storage tier holds current and frequently accessed data.
The low-cost storage tier holds less current, less frequently accessed data.
The archive storage tier holds read-only data that is rarely accessed (but still needs to be available).
Oracle Advanced Compression
Oracle Partitioning
Oracle Advanced Compression in Oracle Database 11g not only reduces disk space requirements for all types of data, it also improves application performance, enhances memory and network efficiency, and can be used with any type of application without any application changes.
Partitioning allows database objects to be subdivided into smaller pieces, and Oracle Partitioning provides a comprehensive range of partitioning schemes, including range-hash, range-list, range-range, list-range, list-hash, and list-list composite partitioning. Oracle Partitioning enhances the manageability, performance, and availability of a wide variety of applications.
ORACLE MAGAZINE
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“Spatial storage maintains the spatial indexes, including the type of geometry, the projections, the tolerances, and the whole series of coordinate pairs. This lets us do a lot more work inside the database.” —Michael Smith, Physical Scientist, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
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Michael Smith, physical scientist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, says that Oracle Database 11g allows the Corps to process very large sets of both unstructured and traditional structured data.
the data sets so that we could run calculations against them as a single entity,” says Smith. “Oracle Spatial 11g can store a point cloud as a single object. This means that we can write simple queries to do line-of-sight, data-point-intensity, or nearest-neighbor calculations without even moving the data out of the database.” Moving forward, the agency plans to use Oracle Database 11g to merge business and technical data into a common repository. Like thousands of other Oracle customers, Smith and his team have learned an important lesson: To simplify management and gain meaningful insight into all your information, you need to be able to store, manage, and analyze all types of data in a cohesive way. O David Baum (david@dbaumcomm.com) is a freelance business writer based in Santa Barbara, California.
READ more about Oracle Database
otn.oracle.com/products/database/oracle11g
Oracle Spatial
oracle.com/database/spatial.html
Oracle XML DB
otn.oracle.com/tech/xml/xmldb
Oracle Information Lifecycle Management otn.oracle.com/deploy/ilm
DOWNLOAD Oracle Database 11g otn.oracle.com/software/products/database
DAVE BRADLEY
works at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s Engineer Research and Development Center. Smith says that one application in particular that can benefit from the new features of Oracle Database 11g is the Operation and Maintenance Business Information Link Regulatory Module (ORM2), a Web-based system for issuing and tracking development projects in and around public wetlands. Anyone who wants to develop on waters of the United States is required to apply for a wetland permit. The Corps uses ORM2 to track the development and its associated impact on the landscape. According to Smith, this permit data used to be stored in database columns as x-y coordinate pairs. The Corps recently moved it to Oracle Spatial to gain point, line, and polygon storage capabilities. “Spatial storage maintains the spatial indexes, including the type of geometry, the projections, the tolerances, and the whole series of coordinate pairs,” he says. “This lets us do a lot more work inside the database.” The Corps makes this data available through Web Feature Services (WFS), making it easier to enter data and share it with other government agencies. Oracle Database 11g can dispatch those Web services directly from the database, thus simplifying the infrastructure. “Being able to store the spatial indexes directly in the database, at the transactional level, enables us to edit the polygons through the WFS transactions,” says Smith. “It’s a standardized format, so we don’t have to develop and maintain as much code.” The center is also developing database applications to work with 3-D point cloud storage and indexing functions, which can now be stored directly in Oracle Database 11g. (A point cloud is a set of three-dimensional points describing the outlines or surface features of an object.) The laboratory uses this type of data structure for recording measurements that come from its light detection and ranging instruments. “Up until now, such data had to be stored in flat text files, because databases had no way of tying together
ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
11/12/07 11:34:30 AM
Special Advertising Section
ORACLE DATABASE 11g
Partner Guide
Partners Are Lining Up to Help Customers Meet Change with ConďŹ dence
THE FOLLOWING SECTION HIGHLIGHTS key hardware, storage, and service partners who are ready to help Oracle customers manage change while reducing risk, lowering cost, and improving performance.
PARTNER INDEX HP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Pillar Data Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Fujitsu Siemens Computers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 NetApp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
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Special Advertising Section
HP HP and Oracle: Improving Business Outcomes
T
he speed and unpredictability of business cycles
with a total solution. “For customers who want to optimize
have pushed the limits of information technology (IT)
their business outcomes, HP and Oracle together offer the
infrastructures at many enterprises. Organizations need to
products, services, and experience to accelerate business
become more adaptable, but often their information systems
growth, mitigate risks, and lower costs, providing a solid
are slow to respond. At the same time, these enterprises
return on IT investments,” explains Eller.
want to gain greater efficiency and effectiveness from their
The companies have invested heavily in their joint
IT systems, lower the cost of computing, and optimize their
solutions. In fact, HP and Oracle manage 13 competency
business outcomes.
centers across the globe that provide proofs of concept;
HP has a tradition of helping customers profit from new IT innovations. As enterprises all over the world discover that
design, configuration, and benchmarking assistance; thought leadership; and training.
they need new levels of availability and integration—in real
HP has been involved in the Oracle Database 11g beta
time—they are turning to HP. HP Integrity, HP ProLiant, and
program for more than a year. As an Oracle database
HP BladeSystem servers offer the highest levels of service
customer, HP gained insight into how the new release would
of any platform in their class. HP storage systems scale to
help the company improve its business. At the same time, as
meet the most demanding customer workloads. HP software
an Oracle partner participating in the beta program, HP lent
provides a leading management platform for the data cen-
its perspective and expertise to Oracle’s development team
ter, plus tools such as HP LoadRunner and Quality Center
to make the new database release even better.
software, to help customers optimize their environments. In
For example, HP worked with Oracle to incorporate HP’s
other words, HP provides all of the components of an agile,
industry-leading network-attached storage solution directly
high-performance, highly available data center, thus helping
into the Oracle Direct network file system (Oracle Direct
customers achieve better business outcomes.
NFS) The result? With Oracle Database 11g, customers
HP also has a long history of working with Oracle. And
can realize scalable and available I/O performance on
Oracle Database 11g will be an integral part of HP’s cus-
network-attached storage that was not previously possible.
tomer solutions.
In addition, this combination of Oracle and HP technology
“Oracle Database 11g, with its low-cost maximum avail-
can leverage existing storage area networks, providing
ability architecture, combined with HP’s software, servers,
customers with investment protection while allowing
and storage, provides an opportunity for customers to take
flexibility for growth with mitigated risk.
advantage of this next level of IT innovation and, in turn, achieve
“We’re excited that Oracle has developed its [Oracle]
better business outcomes,” says Ron Eller, vice president and
Direct NFS feature in Oracle Database 11g on HP Storage
general manager, enterprise solution alliances, at HP.
products so that customers can choose simple, inexpensive storage connectivity and provisioning for grid deployment,”
A TOTAL SOLUTION
says Eller. “It’s just another example of the way Oracle
HP and Oracle share more than 100,000 customers, from
and HP work together to provide customers with better
small and medium businesses to large enterprises. The
overall answers.”
breadth and depth of this joint solution stack—including HP/
HP and Oracle share a common goal of improving their
Oracle reference architectures, applications, and operating
customers’ business outcomes through IT. Because IT isn’t a
systems—allow these two partners to provide customers
separate piece of the business—IT helps drive the business.
FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT | www.hp.com/go/oracle
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Special Advertising Section
PILLAR DATA SYSTEMS Optimized Storage for Oracle Environments
E
xponential data growth, and the data center complexity
monitoring applications, databases, and storage helps IT
that comes with it, is now a fact of life. That’s why Pillar
staff manage mission-critical applications more efficiently.
and Oracle work together to reduce complexity and provide
Database administrators can also establish quality of service
the power and flexibility to meet service levels, even as data
levels by using a policy-driven framework for automating
volumes explode. Pillar and Oracle share a road map for
storage requirements. This capability increases operational
joint integration, certify each other’s products, and provide
flexibility, enables fulfillment of business service-level
consolidated service offerings. The result is the worlds most
agreements, and reduces administrative costs.
efficient system for Oracle storage management—one that
Pillar also addresses the growing customer concern
consolidates storage assets and modularly scales capacity
of resources: power and physical space. In fact, Gartner
and performance to reduce cost and mitigate risk.
predicts that 50 percent of data centers will not have sufficient power or cooling capacity by 2008 to keep up with
GET CONFIDENT WITH ORACLE VALIDATED CONFIGURATIONS
the demand for high-density computing.
Oracle Validated Configurations provide the assurance that
“There is a major shift in the way database administrators
deployed solutions will run optimally and reduce testing
and IT professionals view storage today,” says Pillar’s
cycles, ultimately enabling faster deployment of Oracle
Veilleux. “Space is at a premium and power requirements
with the Pillar Axiom. These certified architectures, based
are becoming an important issue. Companies can avoid
on Oracle Database 11g, ensure that servers, operating
significant costs by purchasing a Pillar solution that
systems, and storage network connectivity components
consolidates SAN [storage area network] and NAS [network-
all work together seamlessly, according to Mike Workman,
attached storage] systems onto a single platform and scales
Pillar’s CEO. As a result, customers experience the benefits
out to grow with your database applications.”
of standardization, scalability, and reliability without
In consolidating multiple tiers of storage and driving
the cost and delays of validation or the risk of untested
up utilization, customers can achieve more than twice the
configurations. “The result is true IT automation and
efficiency for each operation performed per watt of power
streamlined deployments,” says Workman.
consumed, he says. Pillar is also a member of the Green
Also, Pillar’s commitment to publishing new validated
Grid, a consortium of information technology companies and
configurations for Oracle Database 11g running on Oracle
professionals seeking to improve energy efficiency in data
Enterprise Linux provides confidence to customers looking
centers around the globe.
to expedite early adoption of our joint technologies. “We see [Oracle] Database 11g as a natural progression in
MORE ABOUT PILLAR
providing our joint customers with the right solutions for their
Pillar Data Systems takes a sensible, customer-centric
needs,” says Paul Veilleux, Pillar’s executive director, Global
approach to networked storage. We build reliable, flexible
Alliances. “Customers who migrate to Oracle Database 11g
solutions that, for the first time, seamlessly unite SAN with
on Pillar will experience a new era in automation.”
NAS Systems and enable multiple tiers of storage on a single platform. The close collaboration between Pillar and Oracle
CONSOLIDATE ON PILLAR FOR MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY
includes complementary products, certification processes,
The Pillar Oracle Enterprise Manager Plug-in along with
joint integration efforts, and joint expert services. The world-
Oracle Enterprise Manager’s monitoring and provisioning
class power of Oracle integrated with the world’s most
capabilities provide a seamless administration point from
efficient storage solution from Pillar Data Systems results
a single Oracle management console for managing large
in the most cost-effective, highly available networked data
and complex storage pools. Having a common platform for
warehouse available.
FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT | www.pillardata.com
JF08_11g_Advertorial.indd 39
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Special Advertising Section
FUJITSU SIEMENS COMPUTERS Oracle and Fujitsu Siemens Computers
“I
t’s a fact that no one vendor offers the whole picture, so
Oracle Database 11g will deliver the highest level of
partnerships are vital,” says Dr. Bernd Kosch, vice president
manageability, availability, performance, and security for cus-
of strategic alliances within Fujitsu Siemens Computers. “The
tomers. In the jointly run Center of Excellence at the Oracle
key is that both companies bring unique contributions to a
facility in Munich, Germany, Fujitsu Siemens Computers and
strategic partnership, giving joint customers a leading edge
Oracle will evaluate and test Oracle Database 11g with Fujitsu
and business advantage.”
Siemens Computers’s infrastructure solutions and storage
It is precisely these types of strategic partnerships that
systems. Fujitsu Siemens Computers also plans to integrate
fuel growth and innovation. It’s also one of the many drivers
Oracle Database 11g as soon as possible into its own product
behind why Oracle has had a strategic global partnership with
and solution portfolio, and to promote its benefits to customers
the Fujitsu Group for decades —including Fujitsu Limited and
and partners via the joint Oracle/Fujitsu Siemens Computers
Fujitsu Siemens Computers.
ISV Migration Centers in Europe.
Oracle technology is a key component in the Fujitsu Group’s range of servers running Linux, Windows, and Solaris
CHECKS AND BALANCES
operating environments on both Intel and SPARC platforms.
Ongoing performance testing and analysis will ensure that
The Fujitsu Group meets the needs of the world’s largest
Oracle and Fujitsu Siemens Computers deliver on the top
and most-progressive users of information technology by
performance-improvement features, including faster and
providing enterprise and e-business open systems server
more-reliable direct connections to network file system storage
and storage solutions. In fact, Fujitsu Siemens Computers
devices, faster upgrades, faster backup/restore for large files,
is the only company that supports three out of five strategic
faster backup compression, and new security features, such
platforms—Linux, Windows, and Solaris running on UNIX/
as improved transparent data encryption to support tablespace
SPARC–based PRIMEPOWER, PRIMEQUEST, and Intel-based
encryption and tighter integration with hardware security
PRIMERGY servers.
modules for high-assurance masterkey protection. Also in the works is increased password security with support for case-
A SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP
sensitive, multibyte passwords, plus strong password-hashing
Oracle recently named the Fujitsu Group a Global Alliance
algorithms such as Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-1) and salt.
Partner and assigned a dedicated Global Alliance Manager
Additional features include secure-by-default configuration
in Europe who reports directly to Oracle’s headquarters
settings supporting password policies and audit options,
in Redwood Shores. “We are now able to draw on direct
and strong authentication support for database system
support from Oracle’s headquarters, which clearly improves
administrator and database system operator connections.
the planning and implementation of joint activities,” Kosch
Kosch anticipates great things to come. “Fujitsu and
explains. Within the Oracle PartnerNetwork, Fujitsu Siemens
Fujitsu Siemens Computers are strategic to Oracle,” he
Computers is an Oracle Certified Advantage Partner.
says. “We see significant sales opportunities for Oracle’s
“Together with Oracle we can guarantee our customers
technology solutions running on Fujitsu Siemens Computers
enhanced application performance, unlimited scalability,
platforms in general, including PRIMERGY, PRIMEPOWER,
fault tolerance, optimum security, and increased value from
PRIMEQUEST, and BS2000, as well as especially the
products and services that are fully integrated and compatible
FlexFrame for Oracle solution. We look forward to growing
with our technology,” says Kosch.
our sales efforts to capitalize on this opportunity.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT | www.fujitsu-siemens.com/solutions/strategic_partners/oracle/index.html
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Special Advertising Section
NETWORK APPLIANCE, INC. Multiplying the Power of Oracle Database 11g
A
key Oracle partner in the development of grid computing,
copying of production data. As a result, developers can complete
leading storage provider Network Appliance, Inc.,
testing, updating, and patching far more quickly than before.
(NetApp) provides solutions that significantly enhance the power
“When you have to copy and distribute a terabyte of data
of Oracle Database 11g to enable cost-efficient ILM, increase
multiple times, the potential time and space savings that
DBA productivity, and shrink development cycle times.
FlexClone enables is huge,” says Rogers.
“Since the advent of grid computing, NetApp and Oracle have gone down the same path and shared the same
GROWING THE GRID
mind-set,” says Patrick Rogers, vice president of solutions
Many new features in Oracle Database 11g are designed to
marketing, Network Appliance, Inc. “Both companies are fo-
further improve availability and performance of infrastructure
cused on developing innovative solutions that reduce IT cost
grids. Leveraging FlexVol technology, NetApp provides Oracle
and complexity.”
Database 11g with virtualization capabilities that allow dynamic pooling of storage resources, enabling customers to add or
CLOSING THE ILM LOOP
shrink storage and meet the dynamic needs of the enterprise.
With the launch of Oracle Database 11g, Oracle has signifi-
“NetApp FlexVol technology allows customers to grow their
cantly expanded its commitment to content management.
grid environment,” says Rogers. Oracle has done it; they use
Running on NetApp’s unified storage architecture, Oracle
FlexVol to quickly provision and decommission systems and
Database 11g can deliver seamless information lifecycle
rapidly repurpose assets.”
management (ILM). Unlike many of its competitors, NetApp doesn’t have a siloed
OPENING WINDOWS WITH DNFS
approach to storage. High-performance, low-cost, archival,
NetApp was a key partner in the development of Oracle
and write-once-read-many (WORM) systems all run on a single
Database 11g most notably in developing, testing and optimizing
architecture, making it far simpler to migrate data from one system
direct NFS (DNFS) performance and resiliency.
to another. The result: Enhanced data protection for compliance
DNFS, a new feature in Oracle Database 11g, not only makes
as well as reduced data management costs. “NetApp’s single
it even simpler to run and manage a database and storage
architecture means that customers can leverage a single
system over an IP network, it also improves performance and
platform to enable data security and compliance,” Rogers adds.
scalability through automatic link aggregation. And for the first time, companies running Oracle Database 11g Standard
BOOSTING DBA PRODUCTIVITY
Edition can also run on Windows—a development that will
Oracle Database 11g includes a series of advances that speed
enable more small and medium businesses to leverage the
development cycles and boost DBA productivity. NetApp builds
benefits of Oracle Database.
on the momentum with SnapManager for Oracle, “applicationaware” software that detects and responds intelligently to the
THE NEXT PHASE IN THE RELATIONSHIP
application on which it is running.
The relationship between NetApp and Oracle goes deeper
SnapManager for Oracle automates key DBA tasks and
than most partnerships. It spans technical integration, services
enables DBAs to perform functions that were previously lim-
and support, and sales and marketing, as well as executive
ited to storage administrators, including storage provisioning,
alignment. On Oracle E-Business Suite since 2001, NetApp is
backup and restore functions, and even creation of clones.
also the standard storage platform for Oracle’s state-of-the-
Underlying SnapManager for Oracle is NetApp’s FlexClone software, which dramatically speeds instant point-in-time
art Austin Data Center. “Our shared goal is always to reduce IT cost and complexity for Oracle customers,” adds Rogers.
FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT | www.netapp.com/partners/oracle/
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ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
11/12/07 11:28:33 AM
BY DAVID A. KE LLY
MAKING ENTERPRISE CHOICES
PHIL SALTONSTALL/CORBIS
PICK THE ORACLE APPLICATIONS YOU NEED, WHEN YOU NEED THEM. ew standards, new business pressures, and the need to deliver continuous value are redefining the benefit of enterprise application upgrades and new integration approaches. Oracle customers can choose both a road map to a new generation of enterprise applications in the Oracle Fusion Applications future and specific, continuous upgrades and enhancements that deliver new technologies today. “A lot of customers have had a desire and need to integrate systems for a very long time, but up until the last year or so, it’s been very hard to do in a scalable and cost-effective way because of the lack of standards,” says Jesper Andersen, senior vice president of applications strategy, Oracle. “But now with service-oriented architecture [SOA] and the way that Oracle is embracing it, it’s become a much easier goal to achieve.” One way to achieve integration is through upgrading. With investments in SOA and other standards-based technologies, customers get new functionality and greater (and easier) integration choices with every Oracle application upgrade. In addition, upgrades let organizations leverage standardized best practices and eliminate customizations from older versions. “By upgrading, organizations can take advantage of new ORACLE MAGAZINE
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technologies—from Oracle Fusion Middleware, including SOA and identity and access management—that are integrated into newer versions of Oracle Applications,” says Andersen. “In addition, customers have the security that the solutions they’re investing in now will move them along the path toward Oracle Fusion Applications.” Oracle Application Integration Architecture helps this process because it leverages all the thousands of Web services that Oracle has built into its application products. “It defines the objects that you are integrating across—for example, a customer object, an employee object, a product object—as XML datatypes,” says Andersen. “That makes everything transparent, standards-based, and highly extensible, which is really the key to Oracle Application Integration Architecture. That’s what a customer’s looking for in integrations. And that also gives customers a much more evolutionary ability to approach Oracle Fusion Applications.” “Since we went to Oracle On Demand, we’ve seen a tremendous improvement in terms of performance,” says Jacob Waah, director of information technology at Clopay. “User satisfaction has improved. Our move to Oracle On Demand was a wise and strategic decision and has been very, very successful.”
For some companies, the need for greater application integration capabilities and faster rollout of new functionality comes from the requirement to focus on the customer. And Oracle Fusion integration technology is a way to drive more value from existing applications, says Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research, Nucleus Research, in Wellesley, Massachusetts. “In some cases, it’s providing access to a broader set of users. In other cases, it’s providing access to those outside the organization—for example, to streamline collaboration and communication all across the supply chain,” she says. This is the situation with Clopay, a manufacturing company located in Mason, Ohio. Clopay has three business units, including one that is the largest garage door manufacturer in the United States. The corporate IT department is built on a shared services model and is charged with managing IT infrastructure and technology services for the three business units.
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“We were looking to improve customer satisfaction and cut down on costs while delivering a better information technology infrastructure and services to all our business users,” says Jacob Waah, director of information technology at Clopay. A few years ago, Clopay made the decision to move to Oracle On Demand, and subsequently it has moved there in a big way. Clopay has about 75 servers in its Oracle On Demand hosted environment, with 20 of these servers dedicated to supporting production activities. The architecture has been designed to run between 30,000 and 70,000 concurrent jobs per day, servicing about 1,000 professional online users and about 3,000 self-service users. Each manufacturing facility runs several Oracle enterprise databases, which are housed internally and are part of a mission-critical application that’s integrated with Clopay’s hosted Oracle E-Business Suite applications.
RICK ZAIDAN
FOCUS ON THE CUSTOMER
ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
11/12/07 11:24:04 AM
“We needed a robust architecture to handle the load as well as support multiple strategic projects, and that was one of the key benefits we’ve received from Oracle On Demand.”
RAFFI ALEXANDER
—Jacob Waah, Director of Information Technology, Clopay
would have been too involved for Clopay and, as a result, “Since we went to Oracle On Demand, we’ve seen a tremendous improvement in terms of performance. User satisfac- the company was considering upgrading the business unit to Oracle E-Business Suite from JD Edwards. “It looks like Oracle tion has improved. We needed a robust architecture to handle the load as well as support multiple strategic projects, and that Fusion Applications will integrate with JD Edwards, so we don’t have to migrate our JD Edwards business unit in a sepawas one of the key benefits we’ve received from Oracle On Demand,” says Waah. “Our move to Oracle On Demand was a wise and strategic decision and has been very, very successful.” In a fast-growing company like Clopay, planning for the future means finding ways to streamline information flow, increase customer satisfaction, and simplify the IT environment. As a result, Clopay is working on upgrading from Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11.5.9 to Release 12, which provides the best of both worlds—technology and business benefits today, with a clear road map for the future. “We’ll benefit from the live support that comes with the new release, and it will help us implement new projects like transportation management,” says Waah. “It will also benefit us as well as prepare us for the future and [Oracle] Fusion technology. What’s nice is that customers that want to be on Release 12 and benefit from the applications or integration that’s out there will have lifetime support but won’t have to go to Oracle Fusion Applications if they don’t want to. At the same time, though, Release 12 comes with a lot of components that we can integrate with other applications, as well as Oracle Database 10g and all its performance, security, and grid benefits.” Enterprise application integration capabilities were an important planning consideration for Clopay, since one of its business units primarily uses Oracle’s JD Edwards to run its business. By upgrading to Release 12, Clopay will be on a path to Oracle Fusion Applications, which will make it easier to integrate this JD Edwards instance into its main Oracle E-Business “We’re actively looking at our deployed solutions and trying to move everyone into organic Suite deployment. functionality within Oracle to reduce support requirements for the applications,” says Frances Carlson, senior manager, information technology, Roll International. Before Release 12, such an integration
ORACLE MAGAZINE
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rate step,” Waah says. Another upgrade driver for Clopay was the availability of lifetime support. “Oracle’s Applications Unlimited and lifetime support policy for JD Edwards, [Oracle] E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and Siebel customers is really beautiful,” says Waah. “If you don’t want to go to Oracle Fusion, you can still stay with the product families you have and benefit from all the other functionalities that Oracle is building. There’s nothing as good as lifetime support.”
For many companies, upgrading their application portfolios involves making decisions around previous customizations to those applications. However, more companies are looking at application upgrades as a great time to re-evaluate customization requirements and potentially streamline their installation as well as reduce their maintenance requirements. Dominic Martinelli, vice president of information technology at Rackable Systems, says that their application stack needs to be flexible enough to handle specialized business processes. “We needed a CRM Take the example of Roll International, solution that would be comprehensive and that would integrate with Oracle E-Business Suite,” he says. a private holding company based in Los Angeles, which owns several businesses, Oracle’s Siebel applications. including Teleflora, Fiji Water, and Paramount Agribusiness “When we moved to 11.5.10, there was more functionality (a California grower and processor of nuts, citrus fruits, available that wasn’t previously available, which meant that and pomegranates). there were some customizations that we could absorb,” says “We’re actively looking at our deployed solutions and Carlson. “Fewer customizations means less maintenance, more trying to move everyone into organic functionality within stability in the system, and a decreased total cost of ownerOracle to reduce support requirements for the applications,” ship. We also gain better reporting because all of the data is in says Frances Carlson, senior manager, information technology, the system instead of other databases.” Roll International. “But in addition, from a growth and stabilLike many companies, Roll International has built up ity standpoint, as well as looking down the road at Release 12 numerous custom-built interfaces for its enterprise applicaand [Oracle] Fusion, it makes it easier for us to upgrade and tions. However, as part of its IT planning process and its keep the applications current as well as leverage new funcmigration to Oracle On Demand, the company has begun to tionality more efficiently.” take a closer look at those interfaces. “We are identifying and With operations around the world and 24/7 requirements, targeting specific business processes and taking a look at the simplifying makes a lot of sense. Roll is starting with a leg up, latest version of Oracle E-Business Suite, trying to make life since even with a variety of companies, it runs a global single easier,” says Carlson. instance of Oracle On Demand (Release 11.5.10 of Oracle Taking advantage of advanced Oracle On Demand serE-Business Suite) for all its users. vices, Roll has partnered with Oracle over the entire software The company depends on the full range of Oracle ownership lifecycle to help realize its vision for IT and for E-Business Suite functionality—from financials through Roll’s businesses. In addition to improving business processes, order management, purchasing, discrete manufacturing, using the best practices and business processes within Oracle and more. In addition to Oracle E-Business Suite, Roll also E-Business Suite helps Roll reduce risk. uses Oracle Discoverer, Oracle Business Intelligence, and
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BOB ADLER
EASIER UPGRADES, CUSTOMIZATION
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“We needed something that would be very easy to use, easy to maintain, and easy to customize—but also fully integrated with [Oracle] E-Business Suite. Oracle Application Integration Architecture was the best choice to allow us to do that.” —Dominic Martinelli, Vice President of Information Technology, Rackable Systems “Right now, any time we make a change for one business puts added pressure on IT—with a clear need for an applicaunit, we have to regression-test everything to make sure we tion stack that’s flexible enough to handle its specialized don’t adversely impact the other two businesses,” says Carlson. business processes. “By reducing the complexity and number of customizations, “We needed a CRM [customer relationship management] we can stabilize and reduce risk in our environment better.” solution that would be comprehensive and that would inteBecause of Roll’s corporate structure, Carlson needs to be grate with Oracle E-Business Suite,” says Dominic Martinelli, able to provide optimal support for vice president of information technolRoll’s individual businesses as well ogy at Rackable Systems. As a result, SNAP as application environments that are Rackable Systems chose Siebel CRM optimized for each company’s needs. On Demand for its entire sales team. Clopay For Carlson, that means that some The company’s need to integrate its www.clopay.com of the businesses may be on different business processes across applications Location: Mason, Ohio versions of Oracle E-Business Suite led to the choice of Oracle Application Annual Revenue: US$1 billion Oracle products: Oracle E-Business Suite (including and even different sets of applicaIntegration Architecture. Powered by Configurator, Order Management, iStore, Field Service, tions. Thus, the future release of Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle HR, Payroll, Financials, Advanced Supply Chain Planning), Oracle Fusion is an important considApplication Integration Architecture Oracle On Demand, Oracle Database, Oracle Portal eration for Roll. provides organizations with prebuilt “I think [Oracle] Fusion will be integrations and business processes Roll International important for us because we may that bridge traditional operational silos www.roll.com Location: Los Angeles, California be looking at using Siebel for one and applications. For this fast-growing Annual Revenue: US$1.48 billion of our business lines and perhaps server and storage provider, that Oracle products: Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle On PeopleSoft for another,” says Carlson. meant a prebuilt integration between Demand, Oracle Discoverer, Oracle Business Intelligence, “We’re always looking at new and Siebel CRM On Demand and Oracle Siebel CRM different ways to leverage our appliE-Business Suite. cations to support the business and “We have a very small IT staff Rackable Systems help it grow.” with a limited budget, so we needed www.terrascale.com Location: Fremont, California something that would be very easy to Annual Revenue: US$360 million use, easy to maintain, and easy UPGRADING THE BUSINESS Oracle products: Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel CRM to customize—but also fully inteWhatever upgrade and integration On Demand grated with [Oracle] E-Business strategy a company needs, for Oracle Suite,” says Martinelli. “Oracle the ultimate goal is to give companies Application Integration Architecture was the best choice to the choices they need to foster growth. “The key is that Oracle’s strategy is an evolutionary strategy allow us to do that.” O and a strategy of choice,” says Oracle’s Andersen. “Our customers can choose to stay on the existing product lines they’ve David A. Kelly (dkelly@upsideresearch.com) is a business, technology, and travel already invested significantly in, and we will continue to bring writer who lives in West Newton, Massachusetts. them incremental improvements that get them closer to Oracle Fusion. But they also have the option of moving to the nextgeneration, standards-based set of Oracle Fusion applications once these become available.” READ more about Oracle Applications These kinds of choices are especially important for comoracle.com/applications panies that have unique business models—especially since LEARN more about Oracle Technology oracle.com/applications/technology.html having a unique business model doesn’t make your IT requirements any simpler. Just ask Rackable Systems. Unlike DISCOVER Oracle On Demand oracle.com/ondemand competitors that sell off-the-shelf systems, Rackable Systems FIND OUT more about Oracle Application specializes in highly efficient, cost-effective, build-to-order x86 Integration Architecture servers and storage customized for each customer’s unique oracle.com/technology/products/applications/aia/aia_index.html data center needs. It’s a sound business strategy but one that
SHOTS
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Application Integration Architecture Pre-packaged integration between Oracle applications Extensible to third party and legacy applications Common object model across applications Built completely on standard middleware, SOA, and BPEL
Applications engineered to work together from
oracle.com/aia or call 1.800.ORACLE.1
Copyright Š 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
BY AL AN JOC H
Betty Brugger, Northwestern University’s director of information technology, management systems, expects that SOA technology will simplify business processes and customer experiences.
DEFINITELY
NOT OLD-SCHOOL
ANDREA MANDEL
A leading university bets on service-oriented architecture to tame IT complexity, streamline business processes, and improve services for its users. hen Betty Brugger ticks off her top challenges, the list matches that of any corporate IT manager: manage costs more effectively, better satisfy demanding users, strengthen LAN and WAN security, modernize legacy applications, and optimize business processes—all while serving the organization’s emerging global strategy. Except that Brugger doesn’t manage technology for a big corporation; she’s the director of information technology, management systems, at Northwestern University. The challenges of higher education add a layer of difficulty to the job, she says. “The existence of many somewhat autonomous schools within the university creates a very complex environment for those of us in IT,” she says. “If you chart our collection of disparate systems in terms of how they interface with each other, it looks like a huge spider web.”
To cope, Brugger and her staff are embracing a serviceoriented architecture (SOA) to a greater degree than most of Northwestern’s higher-education counterparts. SOA’s ability to string multiple Web services together into nimble applications to address changing business needs quickly is just one attraction. Brugger says that Oracle SOA Suite and its Oracle BPEL Process Manager—software they have started to implement incrementally, beginning with Oracle’s PeopleSoft Financials installations—will let Northwestern streamline its business processes, tame IT complexity, and ultimately improve services for end users. “We want to get real-time data to our people, and we’re using Oracle SOA Suite to do that,” Brugger says. POWER TO END USERS
Oracle SOA Suite—with its BPEL engine, a Web services registry, and Enterprise Service Bus—is only part of Northwestern’s
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“We want to get real-time data to our people, and we’re using Oracle SOA Suite to do that.”
—Betty Brugger, Director, Information Technology, Management Systems, Northwestern University
research and advisory services firm SOA strategy. The university is also SNAP Datamonitor. “Under an SOA approach, taking advantage of the prebuilt Web institutions can modify and tailor their services available with PeopleSoft Northwestern University processes in much more flexible and Financials 8.9, which the school www.northwestern.edu cost-effective ways,” she says. “The funis now implementing to replace its Location: Evanston, Illinois Industry: Higher education damental value of SOA lies in its ability outdated legacy financial application. Employees: 7,100 to let institutional processes drive tech“For the highly used transactions that Oracle products and services: Oracle nology usage, as opposed to the techare more end-user-facing, we wanted SOA Suite, PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, nology solutions themselves dictating something friendlier,” Brugger says. PeopleSoft Human Capital Management, what the institution can do.” “In a lot of ways, technologies PeopleSoft Financials, Oracle Database, She adds that organizations benefit such as SOA are catching up to the Oracle Warehouse Builder, PeopleSoft from Oracle’s complete technology way universities do business,” notes Enterprise Performance Management System, Oracle Portal, Oracle Application offerings, ranging from Oracle SOA Theo Bosnak, senior director of Oracle Server, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Suite to related middleware, applicaHigher Education. “SOA offers a way Oracle Collaboration Suite, Oracle tions, and the database. “Having a to break down the silos of separate JDeveloper, Oracle Solution Support Center, partner such as Oracle to put it all systems by separating those processes Oracle Professional Services together into a coherent whole and start into manageable components to the institution down the path of using support unique ways of doing busiSOA is a great way to begin,” she says. ness and supporting students. Not only does this apply Northwestern’s Brugger agrees. She evaluated several to financial processes, but it is also key to enabling SOA vendors and concluded that the comprehensiveschools to improve recruiting, admissions, records, and ness of Oracle’s technologies was unique. “We could other student-related processes.” have bought one component from here and one from These advantages are particularly important for orgathere, but they wouldn’t have worked as well together,” nizations that face the IT complexities of higher educashe says. tion, according to Nicole Engelbert, lead analyst for education and vertical markets technology for market
SHOT
PREBUILT SERVICES SPEED SOA RESULTS
NORTHWESTERN’S STRATEGY FOR SOA SUCCESS Northwestern is creating new Web services and new types of systems as well as using SOA to integrate and modernize existing applications. “We don’t have a lot of traditional legacy systems,” says the university’s Betty Brugger. “We have very little left on our mainframe.” Here’s how they plan to make their SOA strategy work across the university system: O Start small by focusing on an application area O Use the successful implementation to generate buy-in for other systems O Cultivate acceptance from end users who can communicate benefits to peers O Reduce complexity and integration chores by choosing a vendor with a comprehensive suite of SOA, middleware, applications, and database offerings O Find an implementation partner that can augment in-house expertise, especially for a maturing area such as SOA O Team Web services with a BPEL engine to wring businessprocess efficiencies from cross-system applications
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Oracle provides applications such as PeopleSoft Financials with a wide range of prebuilt Web services, which, when paired with the BPEL engine, enable organizations to configure processes that are unique to their enterprise. The PeopleSoft applications also include development capabilities to enable organizations to create their own Web services. “There are some Web services that we can take advantage of out of the box, and if we want to develop additional services in the future, we can use the platform for that as well,” says Harry Samuels, Northwestern’s applications systems manager responsible for the SOA implementation. Northwestern is taking advantage of PeopleSoft Financials’ SOA savvy in its widely used Expense Journals application. SOA support means that Northwestern can build end-user applications that are easier for students and staff to use. “By pushing capabilities out to users, we’ll have better data integrity, put more power into their hands, and eliminate a lot of bureaucracy,” Brugger says. For example, in the old system, stacks of paper funneled throughout the procurement workflow for order-
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“Oracle is investing in middleware and applications, and that’s a big deal. . . . Oracle has the whole package.” —Betty Brugger, Director, Information Technology, Management Systems, Northwestern University ing, approving, and paying for supplies. The SOA-based alternative creates more-efficient electronic workflows that eliminate this paper-based pain, Brugger says. “Selfservice brings us more into the modern age and in line with our other enterprise systems,” she adds. The SOA capabilities will tie together the financials system with the school’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions, Northwestern’s student management system, as well as a Peoplesoft Enterprise Human Capital Management (HCM) system and a new proposals tracking system. Architecturally, each of Northwestern’s enterprise systems is tightly integrated and runs on an Oracle database. “For example,” Brugger says, “Campus Solutions includes functions for financial aid, student financials, student records, registration, transcriptions, and admissions. Each one of those areas is complex in itself, and the same is true for the HCM and core financials.” Northwestern decided to go with Oracle for applications and middleware because of the functionality the full stack offered, the university’s experience with Oracle Database, and Oracle’s commitment to upgrades. “We looked at the marketplace when we first got into the architecture,” Brugger says. “When we looked at Oracle Fusion and Oracle Fusion Middleware—and looked at their future—we thought that that would be the best way to go. Oracle is investing in middleware and applications, and that’s a big deal. We didn’t see the other vendors as having a total offering as much as Oracle has. Oracle has the whole package.” REAL-TIME DATA THRIVES
Right now Northwestern has implemented only the first part of its overall SOA plan. Ultimately the IT team plans to link systems across departments to achieve faster and more-real-time processing. They expect to improve the cross-system workflow for new employees, which entails a wide range of approvals across departments for salary authorizations as well as access to networks and business applications. Now this can be a slow process. “Today, we use HR and our student system as our systems of record, so we have to wait until people are hired before we can provision them and give them a network ID,” Brugger says. The current process relies on nightly batch uploads to the databases. “If we can do a Web service for this workflow, we’re attaching to one system and sending data over to another, transaction by transaction, rather than batching the data at night. So we could get
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real-time access or real-time information or real-time provisioning, if that’s what we’re doing with the BPEL workflow,” Brugger says. “I won’t have to wait a couple of days before all these databases are populated to give new employees all the rights and access privileges they need.” MEASURING SUCCESS
Brugger will judge the success of the SOA effort according to what she calls “the illusion of simplicity it creates for end users”—the staff and students who will take advantage of new, real-time applications without concerning themselves with the complexities of the back-end systems that make it all possible. “We gauge the value by how it streamlines business processes and satisfies the users,” Brugger says. In addition to saving time and increasing user satisfaction, an SOA strategy can also save money. Maintenance cost reductions are another benefit for SOA strategies such as Northwestern’s, Oracle’s Bosnak says. Whether organizations rely on prebuilt Web services or mix them with their own custom services, SOA standards ensure that the resulting processes will continue to work even if vendors alter the underlying applications code. “You won’t have to go in and change those extensions you wrote. They’ll still connect to that underlying process through this SOA architecture,” he says. “This means you’re reducing the overall costs of maintaining your systems, which is a huge challenge for universities, because of the IT complexity.” If universities can save money and take inefficiency out of their systems, “the cost savings will add up,” Bosnak says. “In turn, IT professionals can spend more time on areas that are more mission-critical to the organization than just maintaining existing systems.” O Alan Joch (ajoch@worldpath.net) is a technology writer based in New England who specializes in enterprise, Web, and high-performancecomputing applications.
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d e v e l o p e r FRAMEWORKS
BY STEVE MUENCH
Services with a Smile
Create data-centric Web services for SOA development in minutes. n this third-anniversary column, let’s take another look at the upcoming Oracle JDeveloper/Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) 11g release and explore a major new feature that simplifies the creation of data-centric Web services. With this feature and a few mouse clicks, you can turn any Oracle ADF application module into a powerful Web service that interoperates with other standards-based clients and services within a service-oriented architecture (SOA). To get started, make sure you are using the Oracle JDeveloper 11.1.1.0 Technology Preview 2 release, which is available as a free download on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) at otn.oracle .com/products/jdev/11. Further, download the starter workspace at otn.oracle .com/oramag/oracle/08-jan/o18frame.zip. This starter workspace eliminates many of the initial project steps we’ve performed many times before in previous columns. Extract the contents of the o18frame .zip file to a path that doesn’t contain any spaces (such as c:\jdeveloper). Then open the FrameworksJanFeb2008.jws workspace in Oracle JDeveloper. Note that the starter workspace defines a familiar Emp entity object, an Employee view object, and an HRModule application module. The Emp entity object is configured with several declarative features, including a TotalComp calculated attribute that computes an employee’s total compensation, a range validation rule on its Sal attribute that enforces a value between 0 and 5000, and an alternate key on its Ename attribute that enables easy employee lookup by name. The Employee view has a named query filter criterion— EmployeesByDepartment—that can be used to find employees in a department with a specific department number. The HRModule has one custom method—
totalEmployeeCompensation()—that returns the total compensation for an employee, given that person’s name. To finish the project setup, go to Application Resources in the Application Navigator and adjust the properties of the database connection named scott to ensure that you can successfully test a connection to a SCOTT schema. If you need to create the tables, use the CreateDeptEmpTables.sql script provided with the starter workspace. ENABLING THE SERVICE INTERFACE
With SOA, different application systems cooperate by invoking each other’s application programming interfaces (APIs). The service interface for your application module enables other applications to interact with its data and custom methods by using standard Web services calls. In Oracle JDeveloper, the service interface is a declaratively configured feature of your application module. To create a service interface, you simply identify which view object instances in your data model to expose to clients, which built-in data access operations you want each one to support, and which custom methods you want to make available. Start by double-clicking the HRModule application module to open the editor. In the editor, click Data Model and note that there is a single view object instance named Employee in the data model. Next, click Service Interface and the green plus sign at the right to create the service interface. When the Create Service Interface screen appears, change the Web Service Name to HRService, leave Target Namespace at its default value, and click Next. On the Service Custom Methods screen, select the totalEmployeeCompensation() method from the Available list and click
Add (>) to add the custom method to the Selected list. Then click Next. On the Service View Instances screen, select the Employee view instance on the Available list and click Add (>) to add the view instance to the Selected list. Click the Employee view instance in the Selected list, and note the set of operations that appears in the View Instance Operations table. This table enables you to control which built-in operations your service interface will support. Resize the screen to be taller to see more of the basic operations in the table. Check the check boxes next to the Create, Update, Delete, Merge, GetByKey, and Find operations—you may need to scroll down the table to see all of them. The Process and ProcessChangeSummary operations are for more-advanced use cases, so leave their check boxes unchecked for this exercise. In the View Criteria Find Operations table, click the green plus sign to add a new find operation based on declarative view criteria. When the Configure View Criteria Find Operation dialog box appears, select EmployeesByDepartment from the View Criteria list, change the Operation Name to findEmployeesByDepartment, and click OK. Finally, click Finish to enable the service interface. Be sure to save all of your changes by selecting File -> Save All from the main menu. In the Application Navigator, expand the HRModule node as well as the serviceinterface folder it contains. Note that Oracle JDeveloper has automatically generated the artifacts necessary to implement the service you configured. HRService.java is the interface that represents the service contract for Java clients. HRServiceImpl.java is an Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 3.0 session bean that implements this interface. The HRService
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FRAMEWORKS
.wsdl and the HRService.xsd files are the standards-based Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and XML Schema documents that describe the service contract’s methods and datatypes. In the future, if you need to adjust your service interface settings, you can click the yellow-pencil edit button in the Service Interface editor, and Oracle JDeveloper will automatically keep your implementation files in sync with changes you make in the Oracle JDeveloper user interface. TESTING THE SERVICE
As you might expect, it is very easy to test your Web service interface by using the embedded Oracle Application Server Containers for Java (OC4J) server inside Oracle JDeveloper. However, before testing your service, verify the following settings to ensure a successful result. First, select Tools -> Preferences... from the main menu. When the Preferences dialog box appears, click Web Browser and Proxy. Make sure the Use HTTP Proxy Server check box is unchecked. (You won’t need a browser proxy for this exercise.) Next, click Deployment and check the check box labeled Allow Deployed Module access to OC4J internal classes. Click OK to dismiss the Preferences dialog box. To test your service interface by using the embedded OC4J server, go to the serviceinterface folder in the Applications Navigator, right-click the HRServiceImpl.java file, and select Run. You’ll know the service is ready for testing when Running: Embedded OC4J Server - Log displays the target URL and Oracle Containers for J2EE 10g (11.1.1.0.0) initialized. You can safely ignore warning messages that might appear due to known issues in the technology preview release. Next to the target URL message, note (but don’t click) the hyperlink. If you were to click the link, you would open the HTTP Analyzer in this preview release (which isn’t what we want to do). Instead, test the service in your Web browser, by copying the target URL and pasting it into the browser’s address bar. If you haven’t changed your default embedded OC4J server port numbers,
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the URL will be http://localhost:8988/ EJB-FrameworksJanFeb2008/HRService. You should see an HRService endpoint Web service test page appear in the browser. To test the Web service in the browser, using a sample parameter, select getEmployee from the Operation list. Then enter the value 7839 in the Empno field in the Parameters area and click the Invoke button. The Test Result page should display the standard XML format of the Web service’s result, and the employee data for KING should be contained in the data inside the tags. Note that when the Web service is accessed by programmatic clients, the XML-based Web service requests and responses are implementation details that guarantee interoperability but don’t require any manual processing. Now click the Return to Test Page link and select updateEmployee from the Operation list. Enter 7839 in the Empno field, enter 5005 in the Sal field, and uncheck the Include in Message check boxes for all of the other parameters so that they are not included in the request. When you click Invoke, you should see an XML-based exception message with the fault string Salary must be between 0 and 5000 on the Test Result page. This operation fails whenever you attempt an update that violates the range validation rule on the Sal attribute of the Emp entity object. Now try repeating the updateEmployee test with a salary of less than 5000. This time, the Test Result page will confirm a successful update by displaying the modified employee data. To stop the embedded OC4J server, in Oracle JDeveloper, click the red terminate icon in the Log window toolbar or select Run -> Terminate -> Embedded OC4J Server from the main menu. DEPLOYING THE SERVICE
Testing with the embedded OC4J server can be useful while you’re developing your service, but once you’re satisfied with it, you’ll need to deploy it on an external application server. Using the Oracle JDeveloper 11g Technology Preview 2 release, you can launch the embedded OC4J server in standalone mode for this purpose. To start the
server, open a command shell window, navigate to the ./jdev/bin subdirectory of your Oracle JDeveloper 11g installation, and run the start_oc4j script. The first time you run it, it will prompt you to create and confirm the password for the fmwadmin account. Remember this password, because you will need it a bit later. You can ignore any warning messages you may see while the server is starting up. When the server is ready, it will display the message Oracle Containers for J2EE 10g (11.1.1.0.0) initialized. Now that the OC4J server is running, the next step is to define an application server connection for this server. In Oracle JDeveloper, select View -> Resource Palette from the main menu. In the Resource Palette, click the folder with a plus-sign icon (to the left of the search field), and select New Connection -> Application Server from the list that appears. On the Type page of the Application Server Connection Wizard, name the connection localoc4j, leave the Connection Type set at Standalone OC4J 11g, and click Next. On the Authentication page, leave Username set as fmwadmin, enter the password you entered for this account when you first started the embedded OC4J server in standalone mode, and click Next. On the Connection page, leave the defaults and click Next. Finally, on the Test page, click Test Connection and wait for the Success! message to appear in the Status area. Click Finish to define the new application server connection. The next step is to create a business components service interface deployment profile, which defines the set of files or runtime artifacts required to deploy the service to an external server. To create the profile, right-click the Model project node in the Application Navigator and select New…. When the New Gallery dialog box appears, expand the General category, select Deployment Profiles, and double-click Business Components Service Interface. When the Create Deployment Profile dialog box appears, enter HRService for Deployment Profile Name and click OK. The Project
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Properties dialog box should then appear, indicating where your projectlevel deployment profiles can be found, in case you need to modify them for any reason. Click OK to close the Project Properties dialog box. Finally, deploy your service interface project to the localoc4j application server connection. To do so, right-click the Model project in the Application Navigator and select Deploy -> HRService -> Deploy. When the Deployment Plan dialog box appears, click OK to begin the deployment by using the default deployment plan. At this point, the Deployment tab of the Log window will show the progress of the deployment. One important status line to look for is Binding FrameworksJanFeb2008
your browser to the standalone OC4J server and test the new Web service with different queries. Although we’ve only scratched the surface of this powerful new feature, I hope you can already appreciate how handy it will be for your future service-oriented architecture development tasks. Whether the client of your service interface is a .NET application, a Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) business process, or another Web service, Oracle ADF 11g will make quick work of the task. For more information on this topic, see the “Integrating ADF Applications with External Services” chapter in the Release 11g version of Oracle ADF Developer’s Guide. O
web-module ... under context root /FrameworksJanFeb2008.
Steve Muench is a consulting product manager for Oracle JDeveloper and an Oracle ACE. Since 1990 he has developed and supported Oracle tools and XML technologies and continues to evangelize them. Muench coauthored the Oracle ADF Developer’s Guide for
The online version of this column, at otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/08-jan/ o18frame.html, describes how to point
Can you imagine... a world without children?
Forms/4GL Developers (Oracle, 2006), wrote Building Oracle XML Applications (O’Reilly Media, 2000), and shares tips and tricks on OTN (otn.oracle.com) and in his Dive into ADF blog (radio.weblogs.com/0118231).
READ online-only column content otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/08-jan/ o18frame.html
READ more Frameworks
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READ more about Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF otn.oracle.com/products/jdev otn.oracle.com /products/jdev/tips/muench/ designpatterns Oracle ADF Developer’s Guide otn.oracle.com/documentation
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Leader in Middleware “Oracle received the highest scores across all the scenarios we evaluated” Independent Report: The Forrester Wave Application Server Platforms, Q3 2007 1
Best in 15 of 20 Categories SOA World Magazine 2007 Reader’s Choice Awards
2
Oracle Fusion Middleware from
oracle.com/middleware or call 1.800.ORACLE.1 1.“The Forrester Wave™: Application Server Platforms, Q3 2007”, Forrester Research Inc., July 11, 2007. 2. SOA World Magazine 2007 Reader’s Choice Awards, July 3, 2007.
Copyright © 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
d e v e l o p e r BROWSER-BASED
BY DAVI D PEAKE
Reporting from Your Browser
Publish high-fidelity business intelligence reports with Oracle Application Express. eb applications are of limited value if users can view the information they need on the screen but have no way to put that information into a suitable format for sharing with others. If your application displays 15 records at a time out of a total of 50 but users can’t e-mail all 50 in a printable attachment or distribute them in slick hard copy at a critical meeting . . . Houston, we have a problem! Oracle Application Express solves this dilemma by tightly integrating with Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher to provide high-fidelity printing capabilities. OVERVIEW
With Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher installed, your Oracle Application Express application can generate reports in Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and HTML formats from any report region. You can also define report templates and customize a report’s graphical aspects by O Adding headers, footers, colors, and page sizing O Inserting logos O Fully controlling pagination and other breaks O Embedding charts O Generating standard forms These capabilities stem from Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher’s ability to reference report layouts you develop in Microsoft Word with the Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Word Template Builder plug-in. You then load the layout documents into Oracle Application Express and marry them with query results to produce the desired output. This column takes you through the procedure for generating a report in PDF format that includes an Oracle Application Express report region and
a pie chart. (Note that the report’s Word-generated chart will not look like online charts created using Adobe Flash, because the charting engines are not identical.) You can run through the steps in this column on the hosted instance of Oracle Application Express at apex.oracle.com. (You must request a free workspace to use this hosted instance.) The hosted instance includes Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher, which is required for the process described, but you must install Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Desktop for Microsoft Windows, which adds Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Word Template Builder to your Microsoft Word instance. You can also run through this column’s steps on a local instance of Oracle Application Express, but Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher must also be installed. All Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher downloads are available at otn .oracle.com/software/products/publishing. PRELIMINARY TABLE SETUP
This column’s example uses a table that holds sales order data. To generate the table, log in to an Oracle Application Express workspace and run md_pdf_ orders_create.sql to create the MD_PDF_ ORDERS table. To run the script, 1. Click SQL Workshop. 2. Click SQL Scripts. 3. Click Upload. 4. Click Browse; select the md_pdf_ orders_create.sql script, available with the sample code for this column at otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/ 08-jan/o18browser.zip; click Open; and click Upload. 5. On the resulting page, click the md_ pdf_orders_create.sql icon. 6. Click Run, and then click Run on the Confirmation screen.
STEPS FOR GENERATING THE EXAMPLE REPORT
The following steps describe how to build a report template and generate an example report. Step 1: Create a report query. Define a report query within Oracle Application Express to incorporate the data you are including in the report: 1. In your Oracle Application Express workspace, select an existing application from the Application Builder menu. (You must start this process from within an application.) 2. From the application’s Shared Components menu, click Reports -> Report Queries. 3. Click Create. 4. Enter Orders in the Name field, and copy the following into the SQL Query box: SELECT ORDER_ID, ORDER_DATE, ORDER_MODE, ORDER_STATUS, CUSTOMER_NAME, SALES_REP, ORDER_TOTAL FROM MD_PDF_ORDERS
5. Click Next to continue to the wizard’s Test Query Report page. If a report query incorporates bind variables, they appear as fields at the bottom of this page. The query must retrieve at least one record, so you must insert values for any bind variable(s). (The example doesn’t use bind variable values.) 6. Click Test Query to ensure that at least one record is retrieved. (You should see five retrieved records for this example.) Close the results screen. 7. Click Next. If you need to include additional session-state values in a report (not necessary for this example),
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you select them on this page from the list of values and then click Add. 8. Click Next to bring up the Create Report Query Layout page. Select Standard from the XML Structure list, click Download XML, and save the XML file to disk. (The Advanced option lets you include additional information such as sessionstate variables and application items, which are not required for this example.) Figure 1: Microsoft Word document displaying the report template Don’t exit from the Report Queries wizard, because you must return to this same page in Step 5. Word document. (You’ve skipped the wizard’s last two pages, which let you Step 2: Create a report template. Using specify, respectively, fields to group and Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher sort on and labels for each field. They’re Word Template Builder, load the XML not necessary for this example.) data into a Word document: 1. Open a new blank document in Step 4: Insert the chart component, and Microsoft Word. From the Oracle BI finish the template. Add a pie chart Publisher menu in Word, select Data -> showing customer orders to the template, Load Sample XML Data..., browse to the and save the template as an RTF file: XML file you saved in Step 1, and click 1. Select Insert -> Chart from the Open. Word should display a success Oracle BI Publisher menu to bring up message (but not the contents of the XML the Chart dialog box. file). Click OK to close the message. 2. From the Row folder in the Data 2. If you included additional elements box on the left, drag Order Total to the in your XML structure in Step 1, you Values box and Customer Name to the can incorporate them by selecting Insert Labels box. -> Field from the Oracle BI Publisher 3. Select the Sum option for menu. (Otherwise, proceed to Step 3.) Aggregation, select the Pie Chart In the Field dialog box, select each item option for Type, and enter Orders by you want and click Insert. Then click Customer in the Title box. Close. All the fields you selected appear 4. Click OK to both generate the “Orders in the document in a string, so separate by Customer” pie chart and insert it into the fields and add labels, boxes, and so the template. Assuming that you did not on to suit your needs. insert any additional XML elements at the end of Step 1, your template should Step 3: Insert the table component. Use look like Figure 1. the Table wizard to add a table to the 5. Optionally, customize the report by Word template: 1. From the Oracle BI Publisher menu, using standard Word capabilities to add elements such as a company logo, a select Insert -> Table Wizard. Select watermark, or a header and/or a footer. the Table option in the wizard, and 6. Select File -> Save As, enter Orders in click Next. 2. For Grouping Field, select the File name box, select the Rich Text ROWSET/ROW, and click Next. Format (*.rtf) option for Save as type, 3. The page that appears asks you to and click Save. select the fields you want to show in Step 5: Upload the RTF template file. the report. Select all the items, and then Relate the RTF template you saved in click Finish. You should see the unpopStep 4 to the report query you created in ulated table structure at the top of the Oracle Application Express in Step 1:
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1. Go back into Oracle Application Express to the same wizard page you left open at the end of Step 1. 2. Click the Browse button to find the Orders.rtf file you saved in Step 4. Click Next. 3. On the Create Shared Query page, select PDF as the Output Format. Click the Test button to preview the resulting PDF output. The online version of this column, at otn.oracle .com/oramag/oracle/08-jan/ o18browser.html, looks at the generated report and how to link the report to your application. CONCLUSION
Often when organizations implement new applications, printing comes last in the list of concerns. Yet even in the internet age, printed reports remain a key decision-making tool. With the tight integration of Oracle Application Express and Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher, requirements for generating attractive reports in PDF, Word, Excel, and HTML formats can be fully satisfied for Web applications. O David Peake (david.peake@oracle.com) is a principal product manager in Oracle’s Server Technologies division. He has been with Oracle since 1993.
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t e c h n o l o g y DATABASE REPLAY
BY A RU P N A N DA
Better Workload, Better Testing
ENRIQUE FAJARDO
Use database replay to record and replay database activities for better testing. ne of the most important processes for testing the impact of system changes—both hardware and software—on a database is setting up a test environment that faithfully represents the database’s actual workload. Although it’s possible to write SQL statements that reflect business functionality, it’s a task that demands an enormous time commitment and it’s very possible that these SQL statements may not represent the database activities accurately. During any environmental change, it is important to run the actual SQL statements—as opposed to a sample of (hopefully) representative statements— against the proposed new system configuration while maintaining their concurrency and load characteristics. Oracle Database 11g includes Oracle Real Application Testing, a suite of tools that record, replay, and analyze actual database transactions. One tool in the suite—database replay—can record transactions as they occur in the database. Later the captured workload can be replayed against a copy of the database on the proposed new platform. Most important, database replay can replay with the exact timing, concurrency, and transaction characteristics of the original workload. Figure 1 shows the capture and replay processes of database replay. When database replay is activated, the capture process records the database operations as they occur (1) in several Workload Capture (WC) files. These files are stored in a directory specified by the DBA (2). Later, after the capture is complete, the
files are moved to the remote system by some mechanism such as FTP (3). When activated, a replay driver (4) reads the WC files and a replay client replays them against the target database (5). CAPTURING
Database replay can be used via both the command line and Oracle Enterprise Manager. To use database
replay from Oracle Enterprise Manager, 1. First create a directory object in the database where these capture files will be stored. For example, create directory replaydir as ‘/home/oracle/replaydir’;
2. Open the Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control, and click the Software and Support tab, as shown in Figure 2. On that page, click the Database Replay link (under Real Application Testing). 3. The main Database Replay page displays the three high-level tasks—
Capture Workload, Preprocess Captured Workload, and Replay Workload—as shown in Figure 3. Click the Capture Workload task. 4. On the next page, answer questions such as whether you want to shut down the database before capturing. Shutting down is not necessary but is recommended, because it prevents transactions from being captured in midflight and allows for a clean starting point for capture. Also enter the directory—REPLAYDIR, in this example—that will be used to store the capture files. Set a filter so that activities by certain users such as SYS and SYSMAN and certain commands such as perl and sqlplus are excluded. You can filter out activities based on program, users, module, and so on. Conversely, you can also record specific types of activities. 5. Click Submit to submit the capture job. The next screen shows the status of the capture as “In Progress.” The activities on the database are being captured now. Note the starting time for the capture; in this example, the starting time is 11:30:04 a.m. on July 11, 2007. 6. Let the process run long enough for most, if not all, activities to be captured. In this example, a period of two days is likely to be enough. 7. Navigate to the Database Replay main page (as shown in step 2), and click the link for the current workload. Click Stop to stop the recording for the capture. 8. Navigate to the /home/oracle/ replaydir directory. The captured workload files are located here. Transfer the files to the target system (using FTP or
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DATABASE REPLAY
some other means). The database takes two Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) snapshots—one before and one after the capture process—and exports them at the end of the capture process automatically.
codeLISTING 1:
Replay clients
$ wrc userid=system password=<Password> replaydir=/home/oracle/replay Workload Replay Client: Release 11.1.0.6.0 - Production on .... Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved. Wait for the replay to start (02:50:03) Replay started (02:51:34)
REPLAYING
Production System
While the capture is going on, create a copy of the production database on the target system. Restore a backup from the production database, and recover it up to the minute the capture started—in this example, July 11, 2007 11:30:04 a.m.—using Recovery Manager (RMAN), as follows:
Test System
Database
Database Capture Files Capture Directory
1
Capture Process
2
Copy/FTP 3
Capture Files Replay Directory
4
Replay Process
5
Figure 1: Architecture of database replay
Figure 2: Main Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control page, Software and Support tab
RMAN> run { 2> set until time ‘2007-07-11 11:30:04’; 3> restore database; 4> recover database; 5> }
After the recovery completes, the database on the target system is exactly as the production database was when the workload capture started. Now replay the captured workload, as described in the following steps: 1. First, preprocess the captured files. Preprocess is required only once per capture; it gets the captured files ready to be replayed. Bring up Oracle Enterprise Manager on the new server, and navigate to the main Database Replay page, as shown in step 2 of the capture. From the Oracle Enterprise Manager screen shown in Figure 3, choose Preprocess Captured Workload (the second task). Provide the information requested—
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Figure 3: Main Database Replay page
Figure 4: Start of the replay driver
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Figure 5: Key metrics on the old and new systems
including the directory name, the OS username (“oracle,” most likely), OS password, database userid and password, and so on—and click Submit. The preprocessing is done by a job, and once the job completes, the workload displays as “preprocessed” and ready for replay. 2. Navigate to the Database Replay main page, and choose Replay Workload (the third task). Answer the same types of questions as in the preprocessing step, and click Submit at the end. 3. The database is now ready for replay. The screen appears as shown in Figure 4. This screen indicates that the replay driver has been started but the actual replay has not. 4. The replay runs in a process called a replay client. Start a replay client from the command line, using the wrc command, as shown in Listing 1. 5. When the replay finishes, the replay client displays Replay finished (04:53:03)
Oracle Enterprise Manager shows the status as “Completed.” Click Report to show statistics about the capture and replay. ANALYSIS
Now that the workload captured earlier has been replayed on the target system, check for errors. To do so, click View Workload Replay Report. Examine the report for any errors due to bugs or other factors. Once that is done, note how the new system’s performance compares to the old one’s. To compare the old and new systems, compare the AWR reports for the periods of capture and replay. AWR reports show
various performance metrics of the database over a period of time. In Oracle Enterprise Manager, navigate to the Performance tab (shown in Figure 2), select the snapshots for the capture and replay times, and perform a side-by-side comparison of the two periods. Figure 5 is part of the AWR report, showing events taking the highest percentage of database time side by side. This comparison shows a simple analysis of the performance of the new and the old systems. Key metrics include CPU time, which is only 8.47 percent of the database time on the new system, compared to almost 18 percent on the old. The db file sequential read is about 11 percent of the database time on the new system, compared to about 19 percent on the old. These metrics are key indicators of how the new system performed, and all the metrics are based on the actual operations of the production database, not synthetic operations, so it can be said with a very high degree of confidence that the new system will outperform the old.
another replay, first roll back all the changes, by issuing flashback database to restore point pre_change;
You can perform this change/analyze/ rollback cycle as many times as you need to until you determine the best configuration for your specific workload. CONCLUSION
Change is inevitable—parameters change, patches need to be applied, hardware is replaced, and on and on. Like death and taxes, change is unavoidable, but that’s where the analogy stops. If the exact outcome of a change can be predicted with certainty, the risk of implementation disappears or at least drops significantly to an acceptable level. Database replay enables DBAs, without involving any other group, to assess the exact impact of a change with a few simple commands while using the actual database workload. The reduction in risk allows for a true high-availability infrastructure. O
MORE CHANGES
If you want to make changes to the new system and retest, you can replay the captured workload. There is no need to recapture the workload or perform the preprocessing again. For example, first create a restore point: create restore point pre_change;
Now make the changes to the new system, and finally run the replay on the new system. If, after analyzing the results of the new replay, you need to further modify the new system and run
Arup Nanda (arup@proligence.com) has been an Oracle DBA for more than 12 years. He was Oracle Magazine’s DBA of the Year in 2003.
READ more about Oracle Real Application Testing
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Database replay
Oracle Database Performance Tuning Guide download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/server.111/ b28274/wcr.htm#BABCAABF otn.oracle.com/pub/articles/oracle-database-11g-topfeatures/11g-replay.html
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3')) $# 01.# 1+.'2 )#" #"1! 0',+ $,. . !)# 0#!&+,),%5 +" --)'! 0',+/ -.,$#//',+ )/ )'(# 5,1 3&, .# ),,('+% 0, #+.'!& 0&#'. ! .##./ +" #+& +!# 0&# -#.$,.* +!# ,$ 0&#'. !,*- +5 / . !)# #+2'.,+*#+0 & 0 / 3&5 '/ 0&# )# "'+% 1/#. ".'2#+ . !)# #"1! 0',+ #2#+0 )),3'+% . !)# -.,$#//',+ )/ 0, 7 3'0& 0&,1/ +"/ ,$ . !)# 1/#./ 0, /& .# /1!!#// /0,.'#/ !& ))#+%#/ +" /,)10',+/ $,. . !)# 0#!&+,),%5 +" --)'! 0',+/ 7 $.,* 0&# #4-#.0/ +" )# "#./ '+ 0&# . !)# !,**1+'05 3'0& !&,'!# ,$ *,.# 0& + #"1! 0',+ /#//',+/ 5 0&# +" 1#/0 -.#/#+0'+% #/0 -. !0'!#/ +" 0#/0#" /,)10',+/ 7 0#!&+,),%5 /,)10',+/ +" /0. 0#%'#/ 3'0& !!#// 0, *,.# 0& + ,$ 0&# )# "'+% /,)10',+ -.,2'"#./ #4&' '0'+% '+ ,+# ,-#+ $,.1* 7 '+/'"# '+$,.* 0',+ +" '+/'%&0 $.,* . !)# )# "#./&'- +" 0#!&+,),%5 2'/',+ .'#/ +" )#2#. %# 0&# 1/#./ %.,1-/ !,))#!0'2# 2,'!# 0, . !)# # " "! % 7 $ 5,1 .# + . !)# 0#!&+,),%5 +" " 0 /# -.,$#//',+ ) '+!)1"'+% / "#2#),-#./ .!&'0#!0/ --)'! 0',+ /#.2#. "*'+'/0. 0,./ /5/0#* /#!1.'05 /0,. %# * + %#./ .#%'/0#. 0&.,1%& 0&# +"#-#+"#+0 . !)# /#./ .,1- 7 $ 5,1 .# + . !)# --)'! 0',+/ -.,$#//',+ ) 3'0& + '+0#.#/0 '+ 0&# . !)# 1/'+#// 1'0# #,-)# ,$0 . !)# #0 ') '# #) . !)# ,**1+'! 0',+/ $,.*#.)5 ,.0 ) ,$03 .# +" #0 ,)2 ,$03 .# +" #* +0. --)'! 0',+/ 0#!&+,),%5 .#%'/0#. 0&.,1%& 0&# . !)# --)'! 0',+/ /#./ .,1- 7 $ 5,1 .# #,-)# ,$0 ,. "3 ."/ $1+!0',+ ) ,. 0#!&+'! ) -.,$#//',+ ) 0 +5 )#2#) ,$ 5,1. ,.% +'6 0',+ .#%'/0#. 0&.,1%& 1#/0 +0#.+ 0',+ ) /#./ .,1- 1#/0 .#/#+0#" 5
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t e c h n o l o g y IDENTITY
BY M A RK RITTMAN A N D JO EL CRI SP
Intelligence and Identity
Integrating Oracle Business Intelligence and Oracle Identity Management hen you are deploying Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, how you handle identity management is as important as query speed and the quality of your data. A well-architected identity management solution ensures that your users are set up automatically when they first join the organization, that they can quickly access applications and data appropriate for their varied roles, and that personal details and access privileges can be easily managed. This article focuses on integrating Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition with two of Oracle’s flagship identity management tools: Oracle Internet Directory and Oracle Application Server Single Sign-On. You’ll see how to combine the security features of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and Oracle Identity Management to provide granular, secure access to data.
STEPHRIC
IDENTITY MANAGEMENT IN FOCUS
User identity has its own lifecycle, beginning with the initial hire, continuing through promotions and changes of department or role, and ending when the staff member leaves and that person’s application access is removed. Over time, employees typically need access to multiple systems, and their requirement for data access will change with their roles. Oracle Identity Management is a broad set of products that provides standards-based identity management tools, including Oracle Access Manager,
Oracle Application Server Single SignOn, Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-On Suite, Oracle Identity Federation, Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle Internet Directory, Oracle Virtual Directory, and Oracle Web Services Manager. Oracle
Internet Directory is an LDAP v.3 directory that leverages the scalability and high availability of Oracle Database to store user and group profiles. Oracle Internet Directory is widely used within Oracle’s own applications and middleware tools to provide a single store of identity information. (For an overview of identity management concepts and Oracle Identity Management, see “Access Granted” in the July/August 2006 issue of Oracle Magazine.) Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition has its own security infrastructure for user and group management and control of access to datasources, but it can also be integrated with numerous other industry-standard identity management implementations, including Oracle Identity Management.
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition includes Oracle Business Intelligence Server, Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services, and the Oracle Business Intelligence Administration Tool, plus several other server and desktop applications. Oracle Business Intelligence Server has a local repository that contains information about the many datasources (data warehouses, data marts, packaged applications, and so on) that business users will have access to via Oracle Business Intelligence Interactive Dashboards. Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services has its own separate security infrastructure of users and groups stored in a separate repository, known as the Web Catalog. Oracle Business Intelligence Interactive Dashboard is the main user interface provided by Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services. When users log in to their respective dashboards, Oracle Business Intelligence Server authenticates their credentials. If an account does not already exist in the Web Catalog, one is created for them. If a user is a member of any groups that have corresponding Web Catalog entries, the user is granted access to these Web Catalog groups and any dashboards to which that person has access. As you’ll see later in this article, the user and group information contained in Oracle Internet Directory can be used to facilitate the same access scenarios. Oracle Business Intelligence Server makes it possible for privileged users
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IDENTITY
to “impersonate” other users—this functionality is used by Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services to implement single-sign-on functionality in various scenarios, including one demonstrated later in this article. For more information, see Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services Administration Guide (chapter 8) and Oracle Business Intelligence Server Administration Guide (chapter 15), available on Oracle Technology Network. BRINGING IDENTITY MANAGEMENT TOGETHER
Organizations that have deployed Oracle Identity Management can easily use it to provide Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition with an integrated, scalable identity management solution across all their reporting needs. This article provides three integration scenarios that demonstrate how to take advantage of powerful features in both products. Example 1: Leverage Oracle Internet Directory for Oracle Business Intelligence Interactive Dashboard Security steps
you through enabling users of Oracle Business Intelligence Interactive Dashboard to connect to their dashboards by using their Oracle Internet Directory logins and passwords. Example 2: Augment Oracle Internet Directory User Identity with Oracle Business Intelligence Server Security Features
shows you how the features in Oracle Business Intelligence Server can provide granular, row-level control over report data to users authenticated with Oracle Internet Directory. Example 3: Streamline Access to Oracle Business Intelligence by Using Oracle Single Sign-On steps you through configuring
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to leverage Oracle Application Server Single Sign-On as a partner application. Business users will then be able to access Oracle Business Intelligence Server functionality by using the same user account as for other applications and will be able to access their Oracle Business Intelligence Server dashboards based on group membership. The examples in this article are based on these specific releases:
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Figure 1: Create a new initialization block in Oracle Business Intelligence Administration Tool Variable Manager O Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 10.1.3.2, installed with the Advanced Security option, which enables the necessary components (Web Bridge servlet, JMX Bean Server, and Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher) to be installed in Oracle Application Server 10.1.3 (rather than the default Oracle Containers for J2EE [OC4J]). In general, Oracle Application Server is recommended for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition running in production environments. O Oracle Identity Management and Oracle Application Server Metadata Repository, installed as part of an Oracle Application Server 10.1.2 infrastructure deployment. (Oracle Identity Management 10.1.4.0.1 includes many enhancements and bug fixes and is bundled as a single download of all installation components—Oracle Application Server infrastructure, Oracle Database Server, and so on.) In addition to the required products, note these other requirements: O Servers on which the various components are installed must have fully qualified domain names (FQDNs) to support the single-sign-on scenario. O If you are using dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) for network addresses on Microsoft Windows platforms, be sure to configure the Microsoft Loopback Network Adapter before installing any of the software. See the respective product installation guides for details. O Before making changes to existing configuration files (instanceconfig.xml, for example) as described in any of the
examples, make a backup of the file for safekeeping. O The examples assume that you have an Oracle Internet Directory instance installed and configured. To set up the connection between Oracle Business Intelligence Server authentication and Oracle Internet Directory, the user accounts must exist in Oracle Internet Directory. To create user accounts, 1. From a Web browser, navigate to the Oracle Identity Management Provisioning Console: http://yourservername:7777/oiddas/
2. Click the Directory tab to activate the user setup page. Set up user accounts as necessary. EXAMPLE 1: LEVERAGE ORACLE INTERNET DIRECTORY FOR ORACLE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE INTERACTIVE DASHBOARD SECURITY
In this first example, you connect Oracle Business Intelligence Server to Oracle Internet Directory, to enable your Oracle Business Intelligence Interactive Dashboard users to authenticate by using their Oracle Internet Directory login and password. At runtime, when a business user tries to access a report, Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services will retrieve the user’s group membership information from Oracle Internet Directory. This example is based on using Oracle Internet Directory exclusively to manage user IDs and group membership. You can, however, also use Oracle Security Manager to import
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using the variable names USER and details of users and groups PASSWORD (password is optional). The directly into the Oracle warnings are generated because we are Business Intelligence directly supplying values for these interServer repository and then nal Oracle Business Intelligence Server keep these details up to variables—something you would never date through either the do in a production Oracle Security Manager environment. LDAP Synchronization 4. Click OK to save tool or Oracle Directory the variable target Integration Platform, prodefinition. vided with Oracle Internet 5. Click OK again to Directory. (Oracle Directory create the initialization Integration Platform block. enables you to create workNote that instead flow that can add users of using the LDAP uid to the Oracle Business Figure 2: Filtering access to different groups through Oracle Internet Directory attribute to establish a Intelligence Server reposiuser’s identity, you can tory as soon as they are prouse the orclguid attribute, which guarvisioned in Oracle Internet Directory.) 6. Click Edit Data Source… to create a antees uniqueness even when a user is See Oracle Business Intelligence new LDAP datasource. deleted from Oracle Internet Directory Enterprise Edition Deployment Guide for 7. Using the LDAP Server dialog box, and another one is created with the more details about various other conenter the following connection details: same name. However, for the example, figuration options. we use the uid attribute, which makes To enable authentication against Host name = name of server hosting Oracle Web Catalog paths a little more readOracle Internet Directory, you must Internet Director able (at the risk of new users colliding create an “initialization block” that Port = 389 with deleted users). You can also create runs when the user logs in, retrieving Base DN = dc=<oid_domain_name>, additional variable bindings for the details from Oracle Internet Directory. dc=<oid_tld> user’s e-mail address (MAIL) or other The initialization block runs at the Bind DN = cn=orcladmin LDAP attributes. session level. Bind Password = <orcladmin_password> 6. Click OK to redisplay the Server Oracle Business Intelligence LDAP Version = 3 Variable Initialization Block dialog box. Administration Tool Variable Manager enables you to define repository vari8. Click Test Connection to ensure that 7. Check the Required for Authentication check box to require all ables and session variables. We’ll use everything is working correctly. users (except for the administrator user) the session variable to define a sessionAfter establishing the connection to authenticate via the Oracle Internet level initialization block. to Oracle Internet Directory, you must Directory server. (If you leave the check To create the initialization block, map Oracle Business Intelligence Server box deselected, users not held in Oracle use Oracle Business Intelligence Server internal variables to Oracle Internet Internet Directory will still be able to Administration to launch Variable Directory LDAP variables, as follows: authenticate if their details are present Manager, as follows: 1. Return to the Session Variable in the Oracle Business Intelligence 1. Launch the Oracle Business Initialization Block editor. Server repository.) Intelligence Administration Tool. 2. Click Edit Data Target…. 8. Restart Oracle Business Intelligence (For example, click Start -> Programs 3. Using the Session Variable Server. -> Oracle Business Intelligence -> Initialization Block Data Target dialog Test the setup, by having one of Administration.) box, map these three Oracle Business your users log on to Oracle Business 2. From the Manage menu, select Intelligence Server variables to their Intelligence Interactive Dashboard Variables... to launch Variable Manager. respective Oracle Internet Directory by using his or her Oracle Internet 3. In the left-hand pane, under Session, LDAP variables: Directory credentials. The user should click Initialization Blocks. be granted access to Oracle Business 4. In the right-hand pane of USER = uid Intelligence Interactive Dashboard Variable Manager, right-click New GROUP = departmentnumber according to Oracle Business Initialization Block… (see Figure PASSWORD = userpassword Intelligence Presentation Services Web 1) to display the Session Variable Catalog group memberships listed in Initialization Block editor. You can disregard the warning the Oracle Internet Directory profile. 5. Name the variable Authenticator. messages that appear when you are
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IDENTITY
Figure 3: Viewing only Eastern group data
EXAMPLE 2: AUGMENT ORACLE INTERNET DIRECTORY USER IDENTITY WITH ORACLE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SERVER SECURITY FEATURES
In this example, you create groups within Oracle Business Intelligence Server and apply row-level security to the groups so that users have role-based data access, regardless of how they log on (through Security Manager or through Oracle Internet Directory). First, create the groups in Oracle Business Intelligence Server, by using the Oracle Business Intelligence Administration Tool. 1. From the Oracle Business Intelligence Administration Tool main menu, select Manage -> Security to launch Security Manager. 2. From within the left-hand pane of Security Manager, select Groups. 3. Add the name of a group that matches the group set up in Oracle Internet Directory. 4. Create groups that match the groups already created in the Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services Web Catalog and that match the group names used within Oracle Internet Directory. 5. Once you have created the groups, use the User Group/Permissions dialog box to create and apply one or more filters to the tables available to each group, thus limiting access.
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For example, you can create a filter to limit members of the Eastern group so that they see data on customers from New York and Massachusetts only (see Figure 2). Each filter defines the data the user can see. Filters are cumulative: users belonging to both the Northern and Eastern groups will see data for customers in states in the north and the east. However, users without any filters applied to a specific table in the repository will be able to see all of the data in that table. When someone from the Eastern group logs in, that person will see data for that region (see Figure 3); if he or she also belongs to another group or other users log in who belong to a different group, they will see data for those particular states. The online version of this article, at otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/08jan/o18biidm.html, describes how to build Example 3: Streamline Access to Oracle Business Intelligence by Using Oracle Single Sign-On.
and the performance of your reports. Users should have a single profile within their organization that grants them access to both their applications and their reports, with a simple-toadminister provisioning process that handles their identity management lifecycle, from hiring to promotion to departure. Oracle Application Server 10g, through the use of Oracle Identity Management tools—Oracle Internet Directory, Oracle Delegated Administration Services, and Oracle Application Server Single Sign-On—provides a solution based on widely used standards. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition leverages these standards and enables you to create a single identity management solution across your line-of-business and reporting applications. O Mark Rittman is an Oracle ACE director and cofounder of Rittman Mead Consulting, a U.K.based Oracle Partner providing specialized business intelligence and data warehousing solutions. Joel Crisp is a principal engineer for Oracle who works on the Oracle Business Intelligence Suite.
READ online-only article content
otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/08-jan/o18biidm.html
“Access Granted”
otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/06-jul/ o46identity.html
Oracle documentation
Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services Administration Guide Oracle Business Intelligence Server Administration Guide Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Deployment Guide otn.oracle.com/documentation
LEARN more about Oracle Identity Management otn.oracle.com/products/id_mgmt
SUMMARY
When putting together an application based on Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, how you handle the issue of identity management is as important as the quality of your data
Oracle Business Intelligence otn.oracle.com/products/bi
EXPLORE Oracle by Example
Creating a Repository Using the Oracle Business Intelligence Administration Tool otn.oracle.com/obe/obe_bi/bi_ee_1013/bi_admin/ biadmin.html
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t e c h n o l o g y INSIDE OCP
BY H A R A LD VA N B REEDERO DE A N D JOEL GOO DMAN
Become a Certified Expert
Oracle University offers Oracle Expert certification in Oracle Real Application Clusters. he new Oracle Certified Expert program provides opportunities for Oracle professionals to earn certifications in advanced, niche, and specialty technology areas. The program’s first advanced offering for DBAs is the Oracle Database 10g: Administering Oracle Real Application Clusters exam. To earn the Oracle Real Application Clusters Administrator Certified Expert credential, you must pass this new exam and meet one of the following additional requirements: earn the Oracle Database 10g DBA Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) credential or attend either the Oracle Database 10g: Real Application Clusters course or the Oracle Database 10g: Real Application Clusters for Administrators Release 2 course. This column discusses concepts relating to sequences, parallel execution, virtual IP addresses (VIPs), and Oracle Clusterware file management. It also provides samples of the type of questions that appear in the Oracle Database 10g: Administering Oracle Real Application Clusters exam. The sample questions and code formats have been adjusted for publication in this column. SEQUENCES AND ORACLE RAC
The use of sequences in Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) is much the same as it is for single-instance Oracle databases, but there are certain Oracle RAC–specific issues. With two or more database instances, sequences may require coordination to guarantee that the sequence numbers are allocated in the correct order. Which of the following are always true regarding the use of sequences in an Oracle 10g RAC database? (Pick two.)
A. It is not possible to use the CACHE option, because each database has a row cache.
B. Sequence numbers may be out of order if multiple instances run the application program that uses the sequence. C. Sequences add no extra overhead to traffic over the interconnect. D. Using the CACHE and NOORDER options together results in the best performance for a sequence. The correct answers are B and D. Answer B is correct because if the CACHE option is used without the ORDER option, each instance caches a separate range of numbers and sequence numbers may be assigned out of order by the different instances. Answer D is correct because the CACHE option causes each instance to cache its own range of numbers, thus reducing I/O to the Oracle Data Dictionary, and the NOORDER option eliminates message traffic over the interconnect to coordinate the sequential allocation of numbers across all instances of the database. Answer A is incorrect because even though each instance has a row cache, it is still possible to use the CACHE option with sequences. In such a case, each instance may cache numbers for that sequence in its row cache. Answer C is incorrect because if the CACHE and ORDER options are used together, all instances must allocate numbers in order by coordinating the assignment of the next value, using messages over the interconnect, thereby increasing interconnect traffic in proportion to the frequency of new-number assignment. Adding the ORDER option requires that sequence numbers be returned in order. How does Oracle Database coordinate sequences with the CACHE and ORDER options so that numbers are cached in each instance’s row cache but are still allocated in the correct order?
A. One instance acts as the mastering
instance for the cached values. B. Instances regularly send the NEXTVALUE data for all CACHE and ORDER sequences to other instances to guarantee ordering. C. The cache information is written and read from the controlfile. D. When an instance allocates a new number from a CACHE and ORDER sequence, it asks all other instances to pass the NEXTVALUE over the interconnect. The highest value for all instances, including the requesting instance, is used. The correct answer is D. Answer D is correct because all database instances know their own NEXTVALUE, based on the last cached value used in that instance. So the NEXTVALUE used for a request from any instance must be the highest NEXTVALUE from any instance. Answer A is incorrect because no database instance masters the sequence metadata for a specific sequence. Each instance has row cache metadata for the same sequence, provided that sequence has been used in that instance. Answer B is incorrect because instances do not send this metadata regularly; they send it only upon request from the instance currently allocating the next number in the sequence. Answer C is incorrect because the cache metadata is not stored in the controlfile. It is stored in the row cache of all instances that have used the sequence since that instance started. PARALLEL EXECUTION AND ORACLE RAC
Oracle RAC databases support parallel execution of queries, data manipulation language (DML), and data definition language (DDL) in much the same way as a single database instance, but there are some special considerations regarding performance and administration issues that are unique to Oracle RAC.
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INSIDE OCP INSIDE OCP A two-instance Oracle RAC database has the settings PARALLEL_MAX_SERVERS = 100 and PARALLEL_MIN_PERCENT = 0 on each instance. The DBA has also set PARALLEL_ADAPTIVE_MULTIUSER to false on both instances. The DBA then logs in to instance A and attempts to create a large index in parallel, using the following statement: SQL> create index sh.sales_prod_cust on SH.sales (prod_id, cust_id) parallel 10;
How are the parallel execution slave processes allocated to build this index?
A. Five slaves are allocated from each instance, and if either instance has fewer than five slaves available, an error is returned. B. Ten slaves are allocated from instance A, and if fewer than 10 are available in instance A, an error is returned. C. Ten slaves are allocated from instance A, and if fewer are available, the creation of the index proceeds with fewer slaves, all on instance A. D. Ten slaves are allocated from instance A, if possible. If fewer are available, slaves are requested from instance B. If instance A and B together cannot provide 10 slaves, the statement executes with fewer slaves. E. Ten slaves are allocated from instance A, if possible. If fewer are available, slaves are requested from instance B. If instance A and B together cannot provide 10 slaves, the statement returns an error. The correct answer is D. Oracle Database attempts to allocate all slaves on the instance where the coordinator process is running, in this case on instance A. If all slaves required are available, they are allocated from this instance, which reduces interconnect overhead. If the coordinator instance is unable to provide enough slaves because some are already allocated or because the parallel request exceeded PARALLEL_ MAX_SERVER for the requesting instance, slaves are requested from other instances. If all the instances together are unable to provide enough slaves, the statement will execute with a reduced set of slaves, as would be the case in a single-instance Oracle Database.
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Another important performance issue related to parallel execution is instance recovery.
that the default is for recovery to be serial, not parallel.
A four-node Oracle RAC cluster has an instance on each node. Instance C fails due to node failure on node C. All instances have the PARALLEL_MAX_ SERVER = 300 setting. How does the DBA ensure that recovery for instance C is done in parallel, thereby speeding up the recovery?
VIRTUAL IP ADDRESSES
A. No action is required, because PARALLEL_MAX_SERVER is already set on all instances. B. Issue the recover command for instance C, using the parallel option. C. Make sure that the RECOVERY_ PARALLELISM parameter is greater than or equal to 2 to guarantee parallel recovery. D. No action is required, because PARALLEL_MAX_SERVER is set and RECOVERY_PARALLELISM defaults to 10. The correct answer is C. In Oracle Database 10g, the RECOVERY_PARALLELISM parameter defaults to CPU_COUNT –1, but the DBA must assure that it has a nonzero value and that the degree of parallelism used by the recovery allows instance recovery to complete within the required service-level agreement for recovery. If RECOVERY_ PARALLELISM is set to a value less than 2, recovery will be done serially, not in parallel. Note that other factors affecting recovery speed—such as default buffer cache size, which is outside the scope of this article—are neither Oracle RAC– specific nor related to parallelism. Answer A is incorrect because setting PARALLEL_MAX_SERVER to a nonzero value is not enough to guarantee that recovery will be done in parallel. If RECOVERY_PARALLELISM either defaults to or is set to 0 or 1, recovery will be done serially. Answer B is incorrect because an Oracle RAC recovery is performed by one of the surviving instances automatically and not by the DBAs issuing a recover command. Answer D is incorrect because RECOVERY_PARALLELISM defaults to CPU_COUNT – 1. On a machine with only one or two CPUs, this would mean
Database clients use TNS descriptors to contact a TNS listener on one of the cluster nodes from a list of the listeners on all cluster nodes. TNS descriptors for Oracle RAC contain hostnames or IP addresses of the public network interfaces on all cluster nodes. When database clients attempt connections to cluster databases, one of the available hostnames in the TNS descriptor is selected and a connection request is made. If the selected instance or listener on that host is unavailable, clients select another hostname and try again until they succeed in connecting. Although this technique improves availability when instances or listeners are down, a network timeout is required to enable clients to detect unavailable nodes. Clients are therefore delayed by the TCP timeout period before they attempt to connect to another hostname, resulting in slower network connection establishment and lower availability of connections. To circumvent these network timeouts, Oracle Database 10g clusters use VIPs, which respond in one of two ways to connection requests made over the public network interfaces. While a cluster node is available, its associated VIP is active on that node and inbound connection requests are accepted by the listener. If a node becomes unavailable, its associated VIP is activated on one of the remaining cluster nodes by Oracle Clusterware, thereby enabling this other node to reject connection requests originally sent to the failed node. This rejection of connection requests results in immediate notification to the requesting client, which immediately selects another hostname from the TNS descriptor. This results in faster network connection establishment and higher availability of connections. Which statements are true about VIPs?
A. VIPs always accept connection requests. B. VIPs must be manually moved from one node to another. C. Clients should connect to the VIP
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instead of the public hostname. D. VIPs should be resolvable through DNS. E. VIPs are used to circumvent network timeouts on the cluster interconnect. The correct answers are C and D. Answer C is correct because connecting through VIPs prevents delays from network timeouts. Answer D is correct because clients must resolve IP addresses of VIPs. Answer A is incorrect because VIPs accept connections only when the VIP is used on its own node. Answer B is incorrect because Oracle Clusterware automatically relocates VIPs as required. Answer E is incorrect because VIPs are used for client connections made over public network interfaces, not over the interconnect, which is a private network for the cluster. Your company plans to switch from one internet service provider (ISP) to another ISP, which will result in new IP addresses for your Oracle RAC VIPs. What must you do to implement these new VIP addresses for your Oracle RAC cluster?
A. You don’t need to do anything. Oracle Clusterware will discover the new VIPs automatically. B. You make changes in DNS, and Oracle Clusterware will determine the new addresses automatically. C. You must plan some scheduled downtime for the whole cluster and make the changes while all cluster software is inactive. D. You must stop all VIP-dependent cluster components on one node; change the VIP address, using the Server Control (SRVCTL) utility; and restart all VIP-dependent cluster components. Then you repeat the same steps on all cluster nodes, one at a time. E. You need to reinstall Oracle Clusterware from scratch. The correct answer is D. A crucial element of the Oracle RAC high-availability architecture is support for most maintenance activities in a rolling fashion. This allows software on one node to be shut down for maintenance while other nodes continue to operate normally. Upon completion of the maintenance action, the node and
the software are restarted and the same steps are then carried out serially on the remaining nodes. Answer A is incorrect because Oracle Clusterware cannot discover the new VIPs automatically. Answer B is incorrect because Oracle Clusterware stores VIPs in its own metadata to avoid dependency on DNS. Answers C and E are incorrect because planned downtime would compromise the Oracle RAC high-availability architecture. ORACLE CLUSTERWARE FILE MANAGEMENT
The two important Oracle Clusterware file types are the Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) and the voting disk. The OCR contains cluster configuration data such as public and private node names, database and instance names, IP and VIP addresses, node applications, and voting disk locations. The voting disk is a disk device or file that plays an important role during cluster reconfiguration activities such as nodes joining or leaving the cluster and public or private network failures. Multiplexing both the OCR and the voting disks can protect them against media failures, but making backups for disaster recovery is still an important activity for DBAs. While evaluating your company’s backupand-recovery strategy, your IT manager asks you to recommend a backup strategy for the Oracle Clusterware voting disk. When would you recommend that backups of the voting disk be done? (Choose all that apply.)
A. Never, because there is nothing inside the voting disk. B. After a node is added to the cluster. C. After a node is removed from the cluster. D. Never, because voting disk backups are taken automatically by Oracle Clusterware whenever database backups are taken. The correct answers are B and C. Answer B is correct because a new heartbeat area is created on the voting disk when a new node is added to the cluster. Answer C is correct because a node heartbeat area is removed from the voting disk whenever a node is removed from the cluster. Answer A is incorrect because each node has a heartbeat area
on the voting disk. Answer D is incorrect because although Oracle Clusterware creates OCR backups automatically, it does not do so for the voting disk. Your system administrator informs you of a disk failure in your Oracle RAC cluster that necessitates a replacement disk. An OCR mirror was located on the failed disk and requires recovery. What is the best way to resolve this issue?
A. Copy the remaining OCR to the mirror location while the cluster is still running. B. Restore the OCR from a backup location. C. Copy the remaining OCR to the mirror location while the cluster is shut down. D. Replace the OCR mirror by issuing an OCRCONFIG –REPLACE command. E. Repair the OCR mirror by issuing an OCRCONFIG –REPAIR command. The correct answer is D. OCRCONFIG –REPLACE is the command for replacing the OCR mirror. Answer A is incorrect because Oracle Clusterware prevents mirrors from being copied while they are in use. Answer B is incorrect because the backup OCR will be out of sync with the remaining OCR, and no logs exist to facilitate a roll forward. Answer C is possible but conflicts with high-availability objectives, because the cluster would need to be shut down, and is therefore not the best way to resolve the issue. Answer E is incorrect because the –REPAIR argument is used to repair a broken /etc/oracle/ocr.loc file that points to the OCR device location(s). O Harald van Breederode (ocpexam_ww@oracle .com) is the Linux technical advisor to the Oracle Certification Exam development team and has worked for Oracle University Netherlands since 1999. Joel Goodman (ocpexam_ww@oracle.com) is the Oracle Database technical advisor to the Oracle Certification Exam development team and has worked for Oracle University U.K. since 1997.
LEARN more about the Oracle Certification Program and download a free exam guide oracle.com/education/certification
READ “Inside OCP” columns otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/ocp
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Sometimes the problem is obvious. Usually, it’s harder to pinpoint. Amazing what you can accomplish once you have the information you need. When the source of a database-driven application slowdown isn’t immediately obvious, try a tool that can get you up to speed. One that pinpoints database bottlenecks and calculates application wait time at each step. Confio lets you unravel slowdowns at the database level with no installed agents. And solving problems where they exist costs a tenth of working around it by adding new server CPU’s. Now that’s a vision that can take you places.
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10/24/07 1:11:25 PM
t e c h n o l o g y ASK TOM
BY TO M KYTE
On Tuning by Tracing Our technologist does a tune-up with SQL_TRACE. y all-time favorite presentation is called “All About Binds.” It takes me about three hours to do the entire talk—which covers performance, memory utilization, scalability, security, bind mismatches, bind variable peeking, and cursor sharing—from start to finish. Today, I got this message on Ask Tom (asktom.oracle.com): I have a query that runs slowly (it takes about two minutes). So what do I do? I turn on tracing (SQL_TRACE=TRUE) before running the query, and consistently, 100 percent of the time, without my changing anything else, when I enable tracing the query comes back instantly!
This message on Ask Tom shows exactly what I demonstrate in the “All About Binds” presentation, during which I say, “I’m going to show you how to tune by setting SQL_TRACE=TRUE. You are probably all thinking that I’m going to run a query, observe it running slowly, trace it, and then tune it. Well, I’m not going to do that—all I’m going to do is set SQL_TRACE=TRUE, and you’ll observe that the query performance and resource utilization are dramatically affected—all for the better!” I know exactly what is happening in the Ask Tom scenario—it is a combination of two things: O When you set SQL_TRACE=TRUE, you set up a new “parse environment” (a made-up term). You have changed your session in such a way that it will not share any existing SQL that was not parsed with SQL_TRACE enabled. So it is highly likely that you will either hardparse a new version of the query or use some existing child cursor that is different from the one you would use with SQL_TRACE disabled. O Bind variable peeking happens at hard-parse time and may affect the plan chosen by the optimizer.
codeLISTING 1:
Different inputs, different plans
SQL> set autotrace traceonly explain SQL> select * from t where id = 1; Execution Plan ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 1 | 96 | 2 (0) | 00:00:01 | | 1 | TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID | T | 1 | 96 | 2 (0) | 00:00:01 | |* 2 | INDEX RANGE SCAN | T_IDX | 1 | | 1 (0) | 00:00:01 | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SQL> select * from t where id = 99; Execution Plan ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 50244 | 4710K | 235 (4) | 00:00:02 | |* 1 | TABLE ACCESS FULL | T | 50244 | 4710K | 235 (4) | 00:00:02 | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let’s start with the setup script to demonstrate this phenomenon. I’ll set up a very skewed set of data for emphasis: SQL> create table t 2 as 3 select case when rownum = 1 4 then 1 else 99 end id, a.* 5 from all_objects a 6 / Table created. SQL> create index t_idx on t(id); Index created. SQL> begin 2 dbms_stats.gather_table_stats 3 ( user, ‘T’, 4 method_opt=> 5 ‘for all’|| 6 ‘indexed columns’|| 7 ‘size 254’ ); 8 end; 9 / PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
It is quite clear that WHERE ID=1 will return one record and WHERE ID=99
will return all of the rest (about 50,000 records). Also, the optimizer is very aware of this fact, because of the histograms in place, and if we parse by using literals, we can definitely see different plans for different inputs, as shown in Listing 1. ORACLE8i DATABASE RELEASE 3 AND EARLIER
But what happens when we bind the ID input—when we issue SELECT * FROM t WHERE ID = :ID? Well, the answer depends on which release of Oracle Database is being used. With Oracle8i Database Release 3 and earlier, the optimizer will more or less “guess.” It will not have any information about the WHERE ID = :ID clause. The information it has is O ID has two values in the table: 1 and 99. O There are 50,000 records in the table. And because ID has only two values, this old optimizer will guess that for any query on ID, about half of the table on average will be selected. And the database would come up with one plan, regardless of the inputs. In this case, it would likely do a full scan of the table.
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SQL> select sql_id from v$sql where sql_text = ‘select * from t where id = :id’; SQL_ID ----------------------------------8s40hfjcbmxzk 8s40hfjcbmxzk SQL> select * from table( dbms_xplan.display_cursor( ‘8s40hfjcbmxzk’, 0 ) ); PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT ------------------------------------------------SQL_ID 8s40hfjcbmxzk, child number 0 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------select * from t where id = :id Plan hash value: 1601196873 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | | | 235 (100) | | |* 1 | TABLE ACCESS FULL | T | 50250 | 4710K | 235 (4) | 00:00:02 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Predicate Information (identified by operation id): -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1 - filter(“ID”=:ID) 18 rows selected. SQL> select * from table( dbms_xplan.display_cursor( ‘8s40hfjcbmxzk’, 1 ) ); PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT ------------------------------------------------SQL_ID 8s40hfjcbmxzk, child number 1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------select * from t where id = :id Plan hash value: 470836197 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | | | 2 (100) | | | 1 | TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID | T | 1 | 96 | 2 (0) | 00:00:01 | |* 2 | INDEX RANGE SCAN | T_IDX | 1 | | 1 (0) | 00:00:01 | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Predicate Information (identified by operation id): -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2 - access(“ID”=:ID) 19 rows selected.
SQL> variable id number SQL> set autotrace traceonly statistics SQL> exec :id := 99 PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. SQL> select * from t where id = :id; 50254 rows selected. Statistics ---------------------------------------------------------------...
From Oracle9i Database Release 1 through Oracle Database 10g Release 2, Oracle Database will wait until the cursor is opened to do the actual optimization of the query—it will wait for the bind variable value to be supplied by the application before figuring out the right way to optimize the query. This is called bind variable peeking, when the optimizer first looks at the bind values and then optimizes the query. In this case, however, depending on which inputs are used to first run the query, the database will either choose a full scan or an index range scan plus table access by index rowid. And in Oracle9i Database Release 1 through Oracle Database 10g Release 2, that is the plan that will be used to execute the SELECT * FROM t WHERE ID = :ID query, regardless of the subsequent bind values, until the query is hard-parsed and optimized again. I’ll address what happens in Oracle Database 11g Release 1 in a minute, but first let’s take a look at what is happening to the person whose scenario on Ask Tom inspired this discussion: 1. Someone hard-parsed the query in question, and the inputs used resulted in “Plan A.” 2. Plan A was the best plan for that person, given the inputs—it was the most efficient plan. 3. Later, someone else executed the same query. Using shared SQL, this person reused the plan generated by the other person (Plan A in No. 1), but the new bind variable inputs were different and the plan generated for No. 1 was not the best plan for these inputs. In fact, the plan was miserable for these new inputs. 4. The person in No. 3 turned on SQL_ TRACE and executed the query with inputs from No. 3 again, but because SQL_TRACE was on, the query did not share the SQL. The query was hardparsed—with the new inputs—and this resulted in a very different plan, “Plan B,” and given these inputs, Plan B was much better than Plan A. Using Oracle Database 10g Release 2, we can observe this easily. Consider the following:
Using DBMS_XPLAN to show the plans for each child cursor
4031 consistent gets ...
ORACLE9i DATABASE AND ORACLE DATABASE 10g
50254 rows processed
So we started off with ID=99 as the bind, and the optimizer chose a full scan (you can prove that via TKPROF by looking at the row source operation if you wish; I did. . . .) Therefore, regardless of the bind value, the database will execute a full scan from now on. For example,
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...
720 consistent gets 1 rows processed
This result demonstrates that it was unlikely that an index range scan/table access by index rowid was executed. In such a case, we’d expect many fewer logical I/Os (consistent gets)—three or four against an index and one against the table. This result represents our “poorly performing query.” Now we turn on SQL_TRACE to find the performance characteristics, and we observe SQL> alter session set sql_trace = true; Session altered. SQL> select * from t where id = :id;
...
Statistics ------------------------------------------------------------
...
4 consistent gets 1 rows processed
Apparently just setting SQL_ TRACE=TRUE is our tuning mechanism! It isn’t really—bind peeking and hard parsing are what’s causing this result, but unless you know that SQL_TRACE sets up a child cursor and that bind peeking happens, this looks very mysterious, especially if you turn SQL_TRACE off: SQL> alter session set sql_trace=false; Session altered. SQL> select * from t where id = :id;
...
Statistics --------------------------------------------------------------
SQL> declare 2 l_cursor sys_refcursor; 3 type array is table of number; 4 l_data array := array(99,1); 5 type data_array is table of T%rowtype; 6 l_recs data_array; 7 begin 8 for i in 1 .. l_data.count 9 loop 10 open l_cursor for ‘select * from T where id = :x’ using l_data( i ); 11 loop 12 fetch l_cursor bulk collect into l_recs limit 500; 13 exit when l_cursor%notfound; 14 end loop; 15 close l_cursor; 16 end loop; 17 end; 18 / PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. SQL> select sql_id 2 from v$sql 3 where sql_text = ‘select * from T where id = :x’; SQL_ID -----------------------------------gw1fks2wb4j2g gw1fks2wb4j2g SQL> select * from table(dbms_xplan.display_cursor(‘gw1fks2wb4j2g’,0)); SQL_ID gw1fks2wb4j2g, child number 0 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------select * from T where id = :x -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | | | 292 (100) | | |* 1 | TABLE ACCESS FULL | T | 68207 | 6927K | 292 (2) | 00:00:04 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SQL> select * from table(dbms_xplan.display_cursor(‘gw1fks2wb4j2g’,1)); SQL_ID gw1fks2wb4j2g, child number 1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------select * from T where id = :x -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | | | 2 (100) | | | 1 | TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID | T | 1 | 104 | 2 (0) | 00:00:01 | |* 2 | INDEX RANGE SCAN | T_IDX | 1 | | 1 (0) | 00:00:01 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
See it run slowly (720 consistent gets). And now that we’ve seen slow, turn SQL_TRACE on again:
Statistics -----------------------------------------------------------4 consistent gets
SQL> alter session set sql_trace=true; Session altered.
1 rows processed
...
720 consistent gets
SQL> select sql_id 2 from v$sql 3 where sql_text = ‘select * from T where id = :x’; no rows selected
...
...
Statistics --------------------------------------------------------------
Multiple plans with intelligent cursor sharing (Oracle Database 11g)
...
SQL> select * from t where id = :id;
codeLISTING 3:
...
SQL> exec :id : = 1 PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
1 rows processed
SQL> select * from t where id = :id;
And see it go fast. It is not magic; it
ORACLE MAGAZINE
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is bind peeking. To see the real plans, you can query V$SQL_PLAN / V$SQL_ PLAN_STATISTICS or use DBMS_ XPLAN to dump the plans for each child cursor, as shown in Listing 2. You can use V$SQL_SHARED_ CURSOR and the SQL_ID from Listing 2 to see why you have multiple child cursors as well. For example, SQL> select child_number, 2 stats_row_mismatch 3 from v$sql_shared_cursor 4 where sql_id = ‘8s40hfjcbmxzk’ 5 / CHILD_NUMBER -----------------------------------0 1
STATS_ROW_MISMATCH ---------------------------------------------------N Y
That is what you would look for to verify that you were seeing an “it must be SQL_TRACE creating a new child cursor and a hard parse with different binds” result. (The queries you run to verify this in Oracle9i Database are slightly different from the Oracle Database 10g Release 2 queries above. If you are interested in the Oracle9i Database queries, you can review tkyte.blogspot.com/2007/09/sqltracetruepart-two.html, where I worked the example through in that release.) ORACLE DATABASE 11g RELEASE 1
The current release of Oracle Database— Oracle Database 11g—changes the above behavior for the better. A new feature— intelligent cursor sharing—enables the optimizer to recognize that performance can be affected when a fixed, one-sizefits-all plan is used and come up with different plans for certain bind ranges. In the following example, I simply used the schema from above—the copy of ALL_ OBJECTS, with one row having the value ID=1, the index in place, and statistics gathered. Then I ran a PL/SQL block that would open a cursor by using one of two inputs—either 1 or 99. This time, instead of just one plan being generated, we’ll see two. The optimizer recognized that one plan was not sufficient for all inputs and allowed for multiple plans to be generated, as shown in Listing 3.
74
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IF BIND VARIABLE PEEKING IS A PROBLEM
Most of the time—almost all of the time, in fact—bind variable peeking works as the designers of the feature intended: in a positive, helpful manner. The query in the application uses bind values that drive it to one plan or the other consistently. It is only when the plan flip-flops between two radically different execution paths, and for some segment of users, that you have a really bad plan. In such cases, Oracle Database 11g might be the right answer for you, because it accommodates multiple plans. But when bind variable peeking doesn’t work “nicely” and Oracle Database 11g is not a viable solution for you, what can you do to get around bind variable peeking? I’ll go through the ideas one by one. Don’t bind that query. Yes, you read that correctly—don’t use a bind variable (yes, I wrote that—do not use a bind variable!) In my example, ID has two values—1 and 99. Let’s say ID wasn’t ID but rather was PROCESSED_FLAG and had two values—Y and N. Most of the records are PROCESSED_FLAG=Y; some of them are N. Some people query the processed records (Y=yes). They want a full scan. Others query the unprocessed records in order to process them (N=no). They want an index range scan. Here my suggestion would be not to bind against PROCESSED_FLAG; instead, use literals. That way we have two queries and two plans. This is also why I do not like CURSOR_SHARING=FORCE, because when a programmer does this (uses literals) and the DBA turns on CURSOR_ SHARING=FORCE, we are back to the original problem! Bind variable peeking comes into play once again—there is one plan for all, and it depends on who runs the query first. (By the way, CURSOR_SHARING=SIMILAR would not have this side effect. It would choose not to bind against PROCESSED_FLAG based on the statistics). Don’t gather statistics that cause the plan to flip-flop. If there is only one plan that
the optimizer would ever choose, then bind variable peeking will have no effect. If you were to execute the above example
without gathering histograms, the plan would not flip-flop. Use your domain knowledge of the data. If you know that when a certain query is executed with a date that falls within the last 30 days, the volume of data would be small and indexes would be used and that if the date is way in the past, the volume of data would be large and full scans would be used, then just use if/then/else. The online-only version of this column, at otn.oracle.com/oramag/ oracle/08-jan/o18asktom.html, includes example syntax for using if/then/else, as well as information on using CURSOR_ SHARING=SIMILAR and stored outlines. Disable the bind peeking feature. You can disable bind peeking by using an undocumented init.ora parameter, but— because this really affects you only if you have statistics that cause plans to flip-flop—I would say, instead, that you should stop gathering those statistics to save the time and resources it takes, and you’ll have achieved basically the same goal. O Tom Kyte is a database evangelist in Oracle’s Server Technology division and has worked for Oracle since 1993. He is the author of Expert Oracle Database Architecture: 9i and 10g Programming Techniques and Solutions (Apress, 2005) and Effective Oracle by Design (Oracle Press, 2003), among others.
ASK Tom
Oracle Vice President Tom Kyte answers your most difficult technology questions. Highlights from that forum appear in this column. asktom.oracle.com
READ online-only column content otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/08-jan/ o18asktom.html
READ more about Oracle Database 11g
otn.oracle.com/products/database/oracle11g
Intelligent cursor sharing
Oracle Database New Features Guide download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/server.111/ b28279/chapter1.htm#FEATURENO07493
SQL_TRACE=TRUE
tkyte.blogspot.com/2007/09/sqltracetruepart-two.html
READ more Tom
Expert Oracle Database Architecture: 9 i and 10g Programming Techniques and Solutions amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1590595300/
DOWNLOAD Oracle Database 11g otn.oracle.com/software/products/database
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COMPANY NAME
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PT Metrodata Electronics, Tbk.
www.metrodata.co.id
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Pythis
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Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
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Red Rock Consulting
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Apple
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Cisco
Global Accenture
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Computer Sciences Corporation
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Sonata Information Technology
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Dell Inc.
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Deloitte
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Sysage Technology Co., Ltd.
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EDS
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Systex Corporation Taiwan
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EMC
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Systex Information (H.K.) Ltd.
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Fujitsu Group
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Taiji Computer Corporation
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HP
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TechAccess Pakistan (Pvt.) Ltd.
IBM / IBM Global Business Services
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Tietoenator Software Technologies Pvt Ltd.
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Infosys
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Unisys
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Ingram Micro
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Unisys West Pty Ltd.
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Insight
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Unlimited Solutions Limited
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Intel
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Wezoomtek Corporation
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Microsoft
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World Distribution Nepal Pvt. Ltd.
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Network Appliance, Inc.
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Canada
Satyam
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Castek
Sun Microsystems
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Groupe LGS Inc. division Artefact Informatique
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Tata Consultancy Services
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TietoEnator Canada Inc.
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TechData
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Europe
Wipro
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www.techaccesspak.com
www.castek.com
2Cana Solutions (Pty) Ltd.
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Africa
Actebis Peacock GmbH
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2Cana Solutions (Pty) Ltd.
www.2cana.co.za
ACURE A/S
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Computer Warehouse Nigeria
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Afina Sistemas Informaticos
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Corporate Software
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Alcatel Lucent
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De Chazal Du Mee Consulting (DCDM)
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Alcatel CIT
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EOH Consulting Services (Pty) Ltd.
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Anelia SAS
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Implementation Factory (Pty) Ltd.
www.ifactory.co.za
Application Lynx
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Integrated Tertiary Software (Pty) Ltd.
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Ares
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New Dawn Technologies
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Asseco Poland S.A.
Omnidata
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Atos Origin IT Services UK
www.atosorigin.com
or@dist
www.oradist.com.tn
Atos Origin Nederland BV
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RPC DATA LIMITED
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B3iT Management AB
State Informatics Ltd. (SIL)
sil.intnet.mu
Basilica Computing Limited
www.basilica.co.uk
VESL
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Bell Microproducts Limited
www.bellmicro.eu
Waymark Infotech (Pty) Ltd.
www.waymark.co.za
BMS Consulting
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Borlas IBC
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Asia Pacific
www.asseco.pl
www.b3it.se
Alcatel Australia Limited
www.alcatel.com.au
Business At Work
Amazing Technologies Australia Pty Ltd.
www.amazingtechnologies.com
Capgemini Telecom Media und Networks GmbH
www.de.cgey.com
Application Hosting Services Co., Ltd.
www.a-host.co.th
CBOSS
www.cboss.ru
Applied Business Systems Sdn Bhd
www.abs.com.my
Cedar Consulting Ltd.
ASG (Asia Pacific) Pty Ltd.
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CGI Group Inc.
www.cgi.com
Attain IT Pty Ltd.
www.attainit.com.au
Ciber UK
www.ciber.com
Automated Systems (HK) Ltd.
www.asl.com.hk
Cnsys
www.cnsys.bg
Beijing Futong Dong Fang Technology Co. Ltd.
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ComArch S.A.
www.comarch.pl
Beijing LBSSocial Insurance Information Technology Co., Ltd.
www.bjlbs.com.cn
CompelSolve Ltd.
Beijing Teamsun Technology Co., Ltd.
www.teamsun.com.cn
CompIT Technologies
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China National Software & Service Company Limited
www.css.com.cn
Computacenter AG & Co. OHG
www.computacenter.de
CMG Online Sdn Bhd
www.cmg.com.my
ComputerLand S.A.
www.computerland.pl
Datang Software Technologies Co., Ltd.
www.cattsoft.com
Comverse
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DataHeaven Co., Ltd.
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Consit A/S
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Dataone Asia (Thailand) Co. Ltd.
www.diasia.co.th
Convergys EMEA Ltd.
www.convergys.com
Daesang Information Technology Co., Ltd.
www.daesangit.com
Cozum Bilgisayar
www.cozumbil.com.tr
Digital China (China) Limited
www.digitalchina.com.cn
CROC Incorporated
www.croc.ru
ECS International Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.
www.ecschina.com
Cronos NV
www.cronos.be
Electronic Data Systems (India) Pvt Ltd.
www.eds.com
Cronos Ibérica, S.A.
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FPT Information System
www.fis.com.vn
CSC
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www.b-a-w.com
www.csgsystems.com
www.cedarconsulting.co.uk
www.compel.co.uk
www.ffcs.cn
CSG Systems (Silicon Iberia)
Fusion5 Limited
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Deutsche Post ITSolutions GmbH
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FPT Corporation
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Developing World Systems Ltd.
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HAND Enterprise Solutions Co., Ltd.
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DIGORA
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Hitachi Data Systems
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DISTRILOGIE (France)
HPT Vietnam Corporation
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DBConcepts Daten - und Informationsverarbeitungsges.m.b.H.
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Huadi Computer Group Co., Ltd.
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Diligenta Limited
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Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
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DNS Hungary Ltd.
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IBCS Primax Software (Bangladesh) Ltd.
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Ecletic Group Ltd.
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iCE Consulting Co Ltd.
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Edenbrook Limited
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i-flex Solutions Limited
www.iflexsolutions.com
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A.
www.eng.it
Jigsaw Services Pty Ltd.
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EOH Mthombo (Pty) Ltd.
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LG CNS Co., Ltd.
Fujian Fujitsu Communication Software Co., Ltd.
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www.lgcns.com
Everis Spain S.L.
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L&S Information Technology Co. Ltd.
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Explorer (UK) Limited
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IT&C Co., Ltd.
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Experteam Consulting
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KPMG Consulting Co Ltd.
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Fadata
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KOLON I’Networks Corp.
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FORS Development Center
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Nucleus Software Exports Ltd.
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Getronics PinkRoccade
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Global Services Aarhus A/S
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Ora-Tech System Pvt. Ltd.
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Global Services Copenhagen A/S
OED Technology Sdn Bhd
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Groupe LGS France
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Propia Co., Ltd.
www.propia.co.kr
GWI Unternehmensgruppe
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PT Computrade Technology International
www.computradetech.com
Horizon Clarity Technology Ltd.
www.claritytechnology.co.uk
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COMPANY NAME
URL
Hunkler GmbH & Co. KG
www.hunkler.biz
Apply Solutions
www.applysolutions.com.br
I-Teco
www.i-teco.ru
ASI Consultant
www.asiconsultant.com
i-flex solutions bv
www.iflexsolutions.com
B2BR Business to Business Informatica do Brasil
www.b2br.com.br
Implementation Factory (Pty) Ltd.
www.ifactoryconsulting.co.za
BGH, S.A.
www.bgh.com.ar
Inatech Solutions Ltd.
www.inatech.com
BusinessMind S.A.
www.businessmind.com.ec
INDRA Sistemas S.A.
www.indra.es
Casa de Software S/A
www.casasoft.com.br
Industrial and Financial Systems, IFS AB
www.ifsworld.com
CFP3 Consultoria e Tecnologia
www.ineum.fr
Compusoluciones y Asociados, S.A. de C.V.
www.compusoluciones.com
Infor Global Solutions GmbH
www.infor.de
CONSULT SOFT S.A.
www.consult-soft.com
Informacines Technologijos
www.it.lt
Datum
www.datum.com
Informatica El Cortes Ingles
www.ieci.es
Ineum Consulting
Information Technologies Company
www.it.ru
Intec Billing Ireland
www.intecbilling.com
Intec Telecom Systems
www.intec-telecom-systems.com
Integrated Tertiary Software (Pty) Ltd.
www.its.co.za
Inter Access B.V.
www.interaccess.nl
COMPANY NAME
Excelsis S.A.C.I.G
URL
www.commitconsultores.com.br
www.excelsis.com.py
FYC Soluciones Integrales, C.A.
www.fyccorp.com
Ingenieria Condor S.A. DE C.V.
www.i-condor.com
JFM Informática Ltda.
www.jfm.com.br
Netix Distribuidores de Tecnologia, C.A.
www.netixcorp.com
Nexsys
www.nexsysla.com
Officer Distribuidora
www.officer.com.br
IT Alise
www.it-alise.com
IT-eye
www.it-eye.nl
KNAPP Systemintegration GmbH
www.knapp.com
Recours Informatica Consultoria e Assessoria Ltda.
www.recours.com.br
KPMG Consulting
www.kpmg.be
RedPartner, S.A.
www.red-partner.com
Kvazar Micro Tekhno
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Servicios, Tecnologia y Organizacion S.A. de C.V. (STO)
www.stoconsulting.com
Kurt Salmon Associates
www.kurtsalmon.com
Sinergy Solutions, S.A. de C.V.
www.sinergysolutions.com.mx
Leaves
www.leaves.ru
Soft Bolivar S.A.
LGS France
www.lgs.com
Softcomex Informática Ltda.
www.softcomex.com.br
LogicaCMG
www.Logicacmg.com
Solusoft
www.solusoft.com
LOGIX
www.logix.fr
Sonda del Peru S.A.
Mdtvision
www.mdtvision.com
SQL Technology S.A.
www.sqltech.cl
Memorex Telex/EDS
www.memorex.ie
SSA Sistemas
www.ssasis.com
Micros-Fidelio GmbH
www.micros-fidelio.org
Sunrising Desenvolvimento de Sistemas
www.sunrising.com.br
Montora
www.montora.com
Sygnus S.A.
www.sygnusconsulting.com
Morse Group Ltd.
www.morse.com
Sysdesign Consultoria Em Informatica Limitada
www.sysdesign.com.br
Mphasis Ltd.
www.mphasis.com
Tilsor S.A.
www.tilsor.com.uy www.transistemas.com.ar
Premier Soluciones de Centroamerica S.A.
www.premierway.com
Preteco
www.preteco.com
www.softbolivar.com
www.sonda.com
www.msg-systems.com
Transistemas S.A.
Network Centric Solutions Limited
www.ncsltd.com
TSnet S.A.
www.tsnetglobal.com
Noetix
www.noetix.com
VTI Tecnologia da Informação Ltda.
www.vti.com.br
Nokia Corporation
www.nokia.com
Middle East
Ordina
www.Ordina.nl
Bahwan Cybertek LLC
Oficina de Cooperación Universitaria
www.ocu.es
Computer and Communications Systems
www.ccs.com.jo
Open Technologies
www.ot.ru
Computer Information Systems
www.cis.com.lb
Msg Systems ag
Opitz Consulting GmbH
www.opitz-consulting.de
Patech Solutions Limited
www.patech-solutions.com
PC-Ware Information Technologies AG
www.pc-ware.de
PDV-Systeme Erfurt Gesellschaft für Systemtechnik mbH
www.pdv.de
Peak Systems Support Ltd.
www.peaksystems.uk.com
Peter-Service
www.billing.ru
PITSS GmbH
www.pitss.com
www.bahwancybertek.com
Computer and Engineering Bureau CEB
www.ceb.com.jo
Districom
www.cis.com.lb
Emirates Computers Est
www.emiratescomputers.co.ae
Giza Systems
www.gizasystems.com
Global Technology Services LLC
www.gtsuae.com
Hyperlink
www.hyperlink-me.com
Integrated Data Solutions
www.idscomp.com
International Turnkey Systems (ITS)
www.its.ws
Intracom Jordan
www.intracom.jo
Mannai Trading Company Limited
www.mannaicorp.com
www.quantix-uk.com
Mercator
www.mercator.co.ae
www.rdtex.ru
Macro Software Systems LLC
www.macro-soft.com
Mindscape
www.mindscapeit.com
Raya Gulf LLC
www.rayaholding.com
Prodatis Consulting AG
www.prodatis.com
QAS Ltd.
www.qas.com
Quantix Ltd. RDTEX Rila Solutions
www.rila.com
RTC Real-Time Center AG
www.rtc.ch
Satyam Computer Services Ltd.
www.satyam.com
Royah
S.C. RomSoft S.R.L.
www.romsoft.info
United States
SCC PLC
www.scc.com
170 Systems, Inc.
Sddc
www.sddc.fr
Actuate Corporation
SIV AG
www.siv.de
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
www.amd.com
SIVECO Romania S.A.
www.siveco.ro
Apple Inc.
www.apple.com
Service & Systems Solutions
www.northgate-is.com
Applied Biosystems
www.sqllims.com
Softek Storage Solutions
www.softek.com
Applimation, Inc.
Softman S.A.
www.softman.pl
Arrow Electronics, Inc.
www.arrow.com
Software Design & Management AG
www.sdm.de
Avnet
www.avnet.com
Sogeti Espana
www.sogeti.biz
Avnet, Inc.
www.ats.avnet.com
Sopra Group
www.sopragroup.com
BMC Software, Inc.
www.bmc.com
Sungard Front Arena
www.sungard.com/frontarena
Cdw Logistics, Inc.
www.cdw.com
Symatrix Limited
www.symatrix.co.uk
Compuware Corporation
www.compuware.com
TEAM GmbH
www.team-pb.de
Teamsolve
www.teamsolve.co.uk
Tech Data Midrange GmbH
www.tdmidrange.de
Technologica
www.tlogica.com
Technology Reply Srl
www.reply.it
Temenos
www.temenos.com
Teta S.A.
www.teta.com.pl
TietoEnator Corporation
www.tietoenator.com
TimeStamp - Sistema de Informação
www.timestamp.pt
Eastern Software Corporation
www.royah.com www.170systems.com www.actuate.com
www.applimation.com
www.easternsoftware.com
Enterprise Business Solutions, LLC
www.theebsgroup.com
Hyperion Solutions
www.hyperion.com
i-flex solutions inc.
www.iflexsolutions.com
INRANGE Consulting Corporation
www.inrangeconsulting.com
Insight
www.insight.com
Juniper Networks, Inc.
www.juniper.net
MSS Technologies, Inc.
www.msstech.com
Mythics
www.mythics.com
NEC Corporation of America
www.nec.com
T-Systems International GmbH
www.t-systems.com
Network Appliance
www.netapp.com
Oy Unisys Ab
www.unisys.com
Noetix Corporation
www.noetix.com
Up to Data, Professional Services GMBH
www.uptodata.de
Novell, Inc.
Vector Software SRL
www.vectorsoftware.ro
Palladium Group, Inc.
www.palladiumes.com
Version 1 Software
www.version1.com
Red Hat, Inc.
www.redhat.com
Visions Consulting
www.visions.co.za
SCT Corporation
www.sungardhe.com
Waymark Infotech (Pty) Ltd.
www.waymarkit.com
SYSTIME
www.systime.net
Whitehouse Consultants Ltd.
www.whitehouse-consult.com
Tech Data Product Management, Inc.
www.techdata.com
WM-data Danmark A/S
www.wmdata.com
Terillium Inc.
www.terillium.com
www.xpedia.co.za
Tomax Corporation
www.tomax.com
xpedia fusion
Latin America Acao Informatica Brasil Ltda.
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www.acao.com.br
www.novell.com
US-Analytics Solutions Group, LLC
www.us-analytics.com
Waters Corporation
www.waters.com
ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
11/19/07 12:59:29 PM
c o m m e n t IN THE FIELD
BY A R I K A P L A N
Succeeding with Failure
Oracle Data Guard helps enable disaster recovery systems—and much more. ailure is something you probably don’t like thinking about much. After all, you work hard to keep your system running 24/7, and you want to avoid the idea of it failing. Even if you’re among those few who can imagine the unimaginable and plan for the contingency of a site failure, how do you sell the concept of a contingency plan for failure to management? The difficulty with thinking about system failure is getting away from the failure concept and the cost of implementing a disaster recovery system. Instead, try to picture your ecstatic managers when, despite the massive system failure that no one saw coming, business goes on without a hitch. With that happy image as a goal, you can begin moving toward a disaster recovery system—and sell it upstairs. Oracle Data Guard, which guards your data at a secondary target site in case something bad happens to your production site, is vital to such a scenario. If calamity strikes at your production site—be it electrical blackout, flood, forced evacuation, or anything else you see on the news every day—you want the comfort of knowing that a remote target site is waiting for you to flip the switch and save the day. Getting data to such a target site used to be a logistical nightmare. You needed to pack up a truckful of tapes, physically move them to the alternate site, and restore data from the tapes to the standby system. And that was when database sizes were fairly modest. With today’s multiterabyte databases, you’d need a fleet of trucks for your tapes. Oracle Data Guard works differently. It runs continuously in the background, constantly moving data from the production site to the target site. The catch, of course, is that you still need to set
up at least one target site to receive the data—a site that might never be used. The cost of disaster recovery systems is not always easy to justify. However, I’ve worked with several companies that have implemented disaster recovery systems that get clear value beyond the “insurance” of the target system. This additional value has come when upper management mandated a disaster recovery system to meet some compliance requirement—and IT looked at this idle second system and wondered, “Hmm, what if we . . .” One use for the target system seems obvious: to help with backups. Some people might regard a disaster recovery system as a substitute for backup, but this is a mistake. Your real backup system should be oriented toward rapidly restoring lost or damaged individual files or blocks. A disaster recovery system takes over entirely for a failed production system. Some companies that I’ve helped have leveraged their target systems for backup in this way: they back up from the target system instead of the production system. The traditional method slows down the production system and interferes with real-time processing. Doing backups from the target system frees the production system from that drag on performance. Other companies I’ve worked with have another convenient use for their target system. They run reporting off the target—not the production—system. Gathering all the statistics, forecasting, and business intelligence that databases can provide is vital for reporting in an organization. But gathering this data can interfere with the transaction-handling duties of the production system, sometimes significantly. By running reports from the target
system, you again free up the production system for real-time transactions. In fact, you might be able to do more with the target system, simply because you can perform time-consuming analysis you never would have dared with your production system. You can also use a target system to enable planned maintenance on the production system. You can perform a planned failover to the target system and let that handle the everyday database chores. Meanwhile, you can perform any necessary maintenance on the actual production system—adding or replacing hardware, upgrading operating systems, applying patches, or whatever is necessary. When the maintenance is done, you sync the two systems again and let the production system resume its usual duties. It’s a simple solution to an oftenvexing IT problem. These kinds of uses for your target system should give you some talking points in selling disaster recovery to reluctant managers. So should the fact that Oracle Data Guard is free with Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. That makes disaster recovery the kind of insurance plan that pays you dividends, even while you hope you never have to collect. O Ari Kaplan (ari_kaplan@ioug.org) is president of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) and a senior consultant at Datalink. He founded Expand Beyond Corporation, a leader in mobile IT software. He has been involved in Oracle technology since 1992.
READ more about Oracle Data Guard oracle.com/database/active-data-guard.html
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11/7/07 3:27:57 PM
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c o m m e n t ALL SECURE
BY M A RY A N N DAVIDSO N
Beyond Data Protection
Oracle Secure Enterprise Search and Oracle Information Rights Management protect information. ne of the most worrisome trends in security is the rise in organized crime seeking to access large datasources. Coupled with the actual increased accessibility of large data stores (either by design or miscalculation), it’s no longer some teenage kid with a keystroke logger trying to grab the credit card number of a grandma from Des Moines; it’s a criminal organization going after the credit card numbers of everybody in Des Moines. Consider a recent headlinegrabbing breach involving an online jobs company. The company’s search engine was designed to allow inquiries like “Find everyone who has ‘fluent in Attic Greek’ on their résumé.” This broad-ranging search capability (a nice feature) was abused to return detailed personal information that the Bad Guys used to mount a spearphishing attack (for example, sending a very convincing e-mail that looks like it came from someone you really know, to trick you into clicking a link that installs something bad on your desktop). The company wasn’t “hacked” per se: their useful tools were just used against them. Outside the enterprise, we use search engines for everything from finding out where a cool new movie is playing in our neighborhood to reading obscure ancient texts online. These search engines are both promiscuous and dumb: you ask for X, you get links to X returned. Inside the enterprise, search engines need to be smart and choosy: they must help people find what they need, without allowing them to snoop for what they aren’t supposed to have. Oracle Secure Enterprise Search was built to be a “better mousetrap”: an intelligent, security-aware search engine. For example, suppose I am an evil-minded employee at Company X who wants
advance information on mergers and acquisitions so I can trade on that information (which is both illegal and unethical). A dumb enterprise search engine, when asked to search for “M&A [mergers and acquisitions] Plans,” would happily cough up those corporate secrets. Oracle Secure Enterprise Search, being a smart search engine, realizes that because I am not in the M&A department, I should not even know that “M&A plan for Company Y” exists (because the name of even a potential acquisition in the title makes the document too sensitive to know about). Oracle Secure Enterprise Search is also smart enough to realize that someone else might need to know that such a plan exists but would need to get specific access rights to the plan. In other words, search results are contextual, based on who I am, what I am asking to see, and other information, including the nature of the document itself. Oracle Secure Enterprise Search is programmable and configurable, so the answer to my “Where is?” or “Can I see?” question might not be black-and-white but gray—a really nice shade of gray that meshes with your corporation’s privacy and security policies. As the world has become more collaborative, there is an increasing amount of information access from remote and mobile devices outside the enterprise (for example, smartphones). These devices are now so flexible and the distinction between “inside” and “outside” the network so mutable that companies must be able to extend their security policies beyond the enterprise. Otherwise, an enterprise could potentially lose its intellectual-property shirt and the corporate crown jewels. Oracle Information Rights Management can help organizations “seal” data from secondary uses,
even outside the enterprise. For example, if I have access to the M&A plan, I cannot necessarily forward it to someone else, e-mail it outside the company, or even print it and hand a copy to someone else. Furthermore, the M&A plan might be so sensitive that any access to it is centrally logged and monitored. Not all information in an enterprise needs such rigorous controls, but some really and truly does. We are entering the next generation of internet-based technology, where organizations harness new tools to get the best of “What’s out there?” and “Where is?” and “Who has?” and “Can I see?” collaboration while preventing collaborative criminals. It’s not just data protection anymore; it’s information protection. O Mary Ann Davidson is the chief security officer at Oracle, responsible for secure development practices, security evaluations, and assessments. She represents Oracle on the board of directors of the Information Technology Information Security Analysis Center (IT-ISAC) and the Defense Science Board and is on the editorial review board of SC Magazine.
LEARN more about Oracle Secure Enterprise Search
oracle.com/database/secure-enterprise-search.html
Oracle Information Rights Management
oracle.com/products/middleware/contentmanagement/information-rights-management.html
READ more Davidson
blogs.oracle.com/maryanndavidson
DISCUSS Security
forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=51
DOWNLOAD Oracle Secure Enterprise Search oracle.com/technology/products/oses
Oracle Information Rights Management
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ORACLE MAGAZINE
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008
79
c o m m e n t ANALYST’S CORNER
BY DAVI D BAUM
Moving the Business Forward
Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle On Demand pave the way for application upgrades. racle Magazine spoke with Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research at Nucleus Research, about the latest trends in application software. Oracle Magazine: What new technologies are driving customers to upgrade their enterprise applications? Wettemann: From a technology perspective, there are two primary drivers. First is the rise of standard integration technology. We’re starting to see companies adopt service-oriented architecture [SOA] to make integration less costly, less risky, and more repeatable. Second, from an application perspective, Web 2.0 technologies are causing users to demand simplicity. If people can find anything they want on the internet, why can’t they find the information they need within the enterprise? That’s the issue. Oracle Magazine: What do these changes mean for application software vendors? Wettemann: Vendors are making applications more modular, so they can make specific functions available to users without forcing them to install an entire software package. There is also a greater focus on ease-of-use, such as minimizing training requirements and making interfaces more intuitive. Oracle Magazine: How do on-demand solutions change our perspective on software upgrades? Wettemann: On-demand customers are typically on “rolling upgrade” paths, which deliver incremental advancements rather than massive upgrades marked by entirely new versions. Part of the appeal of this type of deployment is the ability to gain new capabilities without disrupting the business. The software vendor or hosting provider minimizes the cost and effort associated with support-
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ing and upgrading applications, and determines what customers need. For example, with Oracle On Demand, Oracle manages software upgrades based on its innate familiarity with the product road map and based on the collective knowledge it gains from supporting many different implementations. Oracle supports many different customer environments and can leverage that knowledge across the entire customer base. Oracle Magazine: How does Oracle address integration as part of this deployment and upgrade cycle? Wettemann: Oracle has recognized that smooth integration is key to achieving visibility across the supply chain. We see this more and more as the Oracle Fusion Middleware strategy evolves. Part of this strategy is to help Oracle customers drive more value from their existing applications. In some cases, Oracle provides access to a broader set of users. In other cases, it provides access to people outside the organization by streamlining collaboration and communication. As part of the Oracle Application Integration Architecture, Oracle offers not just integration tools but guidance and best practices for integrating applications. Oracle Magazine: How are companies evaluating their Oracle Applications upgrade choices? Wettemann: Smart CIOs want to know which upgrade paths deliver the most value. Many of them will adopt [Oracle] Fusion at some point, but they are studying the product road map to find the least risky and disruptive path to follow. Part of this involves deciding whether they want to manage these applications internally or have some of them managed externally in an Oracle
On Demand environment. The upside for them is that they have a lot of flexibility. They can decide what they want to keep in-house and what they want to outsource. Oracle Magazine: What finally motivates CIOs to upgrade, extend, or outsource their applications? Wettemann: One big motivator is the desire to simplify IT. Another one is the desire to acquire standardized integration technology like SOA. But the biggest motivator is what users are saying: they want the enterprise application environment to be intuitive, not disruptive or complicated. The biggest challenge for today’s CIOs is to make their applications easy to access and as intuitive as possible. The best CIOs have stopped talking about IT and have started talking about what they can do to develop the business. O David Baum (david@dbaumcomm.com) is a freelance business writer who is based in Santa Barbara, California. Nucleus Research (www.nucleusresearch.com) provides research and advisory services, including financial modeling tools, deployment assessments, and case studies.
READ more about Oracle Fusion Applications oracle.com/applications/fusion.html
Oracle Application Integration Architecture
oracle.com/applications/oracle-applicationintegration-architecture.html
Oracle On Demand oracle.com/ondemand
LISTEN to Oracle Fusion AppCasts oracle.com/applications/podcast-fusion.html
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11/6/07 2:33:24 PM
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