Thoughts

10g (1) 11c (1) 11g (5) 12c (4) 3.0 (1) ApEx (4) Cloud (11) database (10) DBA (1) EBR (1) EC2 (2) education (3) EOUC (1) ExaData (1) F2F (1) Forms (7) java (1) language (2) memorabilia (2) Metalink vs MOS (4) multi-cultural (4) on-line communities (1) oracle (7) performance (5) projects (1) reciproke (1) Reports (2) RUP (1) sales (2) services (5) silence (1) SOA (3) SQL Server (3) standards (6) Sun (1) support (6) W8 (1) WebLogic Server (5)

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Edition-Based Redefinition

Oracle 11g does include an interesting feature, the feature to upgrade your applications in a well ordered and controlled manner. You can test the application before you GoLive with it, and you do not loose any information. The users can do their job in the pre-upgraded version whilst you change the new version, test it and change to it.

Edition-Based Redefinition is, Tom Kyte says, the most important thing that happened since we got PL/SQL in the database. And, Mr Kyte always - in my opinion - knows what he says.

So, go for the manual pages and study EBR. You can have editions on SYNOMYNS, VIEWs and PL/SQL-modules in the database. And there are some rules to consider when you try this out. So carefully study the steps in the manual.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Oracle 11g Reports enhancements

Oracle Reports is here to stay as well, there is lots and lots of money and people time invested in that product. The new release makes it more easy to hide the sequential number in the URL created, now you can say "lets do it random" so it is more hard to guess. In previous releases you could easily see other reports by just decrease the seq nr in the URL by one. If the report was there you could see it.

Also, the JVM is the same JVM as the Forms process, so there is performance gains to do if you are calling Reports from Forms. Most of us still do... And further, there is no need to pass the password anymore to the Reports call. That is taken care of.

Oracle Forms future and Oracle 11g Database

Oracle Forms is here to stay, officials says at Oracle Open World. So, stay calm you Forms Developers out there. The new Oracle Forms 11g has many new features though to make it easy to incorporate new functionality, using web services or Javascript.

Also, Oracle Forms 11g has the capability to react asynchronous to external events, that has not been possible with earlier editions of Forms.

Speaking of editions, upgrading your application in a 24/7 environment is now possible as well. Using the feature in Oracle Database 11g R2 called Edition-Based Redefinition. Simply speaking it works on synonyms, views and PL/SQL-objects. And you have a pre-state and a post-state of the application running in parallell. Looks like a good trick. Lets try this at home! :-)

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Oracle Open World has started

This Sunday it all started, the Oracle Develop sessions. Tom Kyte was a blast, as always, talked about developers and what we do wrong.

Also, early this morning there was an excellent presentation on integrating Oracle Forms into Application Express. Worth looking into.

The ApEx platform is a platform to be counted on.

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Up where we belong...

The cloud is coming, Oracle has found a way of licensing the Cloud. Sounds good on paper. The trouble is that there is not the same situation if you ask middle-sized customers, not at least if you ask Swedish customers.

There is some fuzz around pricing policies here in Sweden, and Virtual Computing. "OK, you can upgrade to a 64 bit version, but Oracle want you to pay 120 000 USD in license fees".

"Say what?"

"Yes, it says so here in the list of prices".

"OK, let's see, we have to think about that, what about moving to MySQL what price tag is there in doing that?"

Oracle Corp must have an answer, and an answer soon. Or think again, do it again, do it right.

Ah yes...Oracle Support do listen to us, Oracle customer base. We will have an simple HTML-interface to access Oracle Support. Or My Oracle Support. The more flashy guys will have flash...