Weblog for the AMIS Technology corner
Archive for January, 2005
BPEL-Soft – Oracle’s previous acquisition showcased during AMIS Query
Jan 29th
Want to know more on Oracle BPEL Process Manager and in particular about the upcoming release with the JDeveloper plugin? This article gives an overview as well as some screenshots of exactly that. On Thursday January 27th – we had another AMIS Query, this time on Oracle BPEL Process Manager. For this session, we have joined forces with Oracle. Sandor Nieuwenhuijs (Oracle’s Senior Principal Product Manager for Oracle BPEL Process Manager) presented and demonstrated Oracle BPEL Process Manager, both the current offering with an Eclipse Design Time plugin as well as the beta preview of the coming release that has a JDeveloper plugin. The audience was largely technical in nature. About half had (also) worked with Eclipse, the vast majority were JDeveloper users – a novelty for Sandor who usually presents to Eclipse minded audiences.
Handouts for this session can be downloaded here: Oracle BPEL Process Manager – handouts for AMIS Query, January 27th. Note that this does not include the software handouts that all participants received: the not yet available Beta for the Oracle BPEL PM Design Time plugin for JDeveloper! Bound by a virtual non-disclosure agreement, we are not allowed to distribute this software or tell others too much about it. Read the rest of this entry »
Missed MySQL New Toolset
Jan 28th
I apparently completely missed the new MySQL toolset, which was announced on December the 8th 2004. The MySQL database ships now with easy-to-use visual database tools:
Follow this link for more info and how to download these tools. The tools are licenced under the normal MySQL conditions.
Here also a small preview:
AMIS Query on Oracle BPEL Process Manager – Overview, Latest developments and a Preview of the (beta) JDeveloper plugin
Jan 27th
Today – January 27th – we have another AMIS Query, this time on Oracle BPEL Process Manager. AMIS Queries are a series of expert technical sessions for AMIS staff, business relations and technical specialists from any organization including our ‘competitors’. We have recently had sessions on Oracle ADF (Application Development Framework), Toplink, JHeadstart, The Future for (traditional) Oracle Development Tools etc. For today’s session, we have joined forces with Oracle. Sandor Nieuwenhuijs (Oracle’s Senior Principal Product Manager for Oracle BPEL Process Manager) presented and demonstrated Oracle BPEL Process Manager, both the current offering with an Eclipse Design Time plugin as well as the beta preview of the coming release that has a JDeveloper plugin.
Handouts for this session can be downloaded here: Oracle BPEL Process Manager – handouts for AMIS Query, January 27th. Read the rest of this entry »
(When) Should we embark on ADF JHeadstart?
Jan 27th
Organizations currently using JHeadstart 9.0.4.x or 9.0.5.x (for JDeveloper 9i or JDeveloper 10g (9.0.5.x) may wonder whether and when they should pick up the soon to be released ADF JHeadstart release. Moving towards the latest technology has a certain appeal as well as a scare factor. I will try to list advantages of moving to ADF JHeadstart as well as points to consider.
Reasons for moving to ADF JHeadstart
- Richer generation capabilities – currently especially for UIX: Shuttle (Parent and Intersection), Tree and Tree-Form layout-style, Multi-level master-detail nesting (JSP too), automatic generation of Application Structure File (including base and detail groups and lov’s!) based on the ADF Business Components; quick search, advanced search and option to publish result in same page, all master-detail layout combinations. The generator’s functionality is expected to grow in the near future, not in the least because of the new, more open architecture of the generator.
- Chucked legacy- this new ADF JHeadstart release was built from the ground, based on years of JHeadstart experience but not the old code base; both generator and runtime library were completely overhauled; the runtime is largely replaced by ADF’s runtime libraries. The new JHeadstart runtime library contains fewer classes and probably no more than 5% of the code was reused from the current 9.0.5.x release of JHeadstart. The code has much improved because it was redesigned; many old constructions and solutions could be removed from the code; legacy built up in more than 4 years of development could be cleansed.
W3C Recommendations Enhance SOAP Performance
Jan 26th
Read this today on http://w3.org:
The World Wide Web Consortium today released three W3C Recommendations to improve Web services performance by standardizing the transmission of large binary data. “Web services have just become faster and more usable,” said Yves Lafon (W3C).
In short this means that binary data should be transported faster and more efficient to and from webservices.
Effective Oracle by Design
Jan 25th
Title: Effective Oracle by Design – Design and Build High-Performance Oracle Applications
Author: Thomas Kyte
Published by: Oracle Press
ISBN: 0-07-223065-7
Publication Date: 2003
Details: 664 pages, $59.99; www.OraclePressBooks.com
I recently read this nice book written by Thomas Kyte. In this book Kyte addresses a lot of different design issues that should be made by developers and DBA in order to create a well performant system.
Read the rest of this entry »
Oracle Business Intelligence Spreadsheet Add-In Available for Download
Jan 25th
As was announced early in 2004, Oracle has just released the Oracle Business Intelligence Spreadsheet Add-In. This is an add-in for Excel.
OracleBI Spreadsheet Add-In enables end users to display and navigate Oracle OLAP data from within Excel. Users can treat the Oracle OLAP data as regular Excel data. For example, they can create formulas and graphs, which enables them to combine the powerful analytic capabilities of Oracle OLAP with standard Excel functionality. Using a wizard-driven interface, users can select data from Oracle OLAP simply by choosing from a list of values or by creating advanced selections, such as those based on exceptions, top/bottom analysis, or hierarchies. In addition, users can create Oracle OLAP-based calculations using a wizard. The built-in Query Wizard and Calculation Wizard are based on the Oracle Business Intelligence Beans wizards, thus ensuring a consistent interface with other applications that are based on Oracle Business Intelligence Beans.
With this add-in, it becomes much easier to make use of the OLAP functionality in the Oracle 9iR2 and 10g database. Wizard-driven from Excel, end-users with only a little training should be able to perform analysis that otherwise would require the use of custom built applications or the configuration of Analysis tools such as Discoverer.
As of yet I have not done anything with the plugin, so I will reserve both judgement and recommendations. I hope to tell you more in a few weeks.
The homepage of the Oracle BI plugin for Excel: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/bi/spreadsheet_addin/index.html. View an online demo.
Installation instructions.
The software can be downloaded from OTN through a download link to the standalone Excel plugin available from the homepage : Download OracleBI Spreadsheet Add-In 10g 10.1.2.0.0.
Sample Application: The Common Schema – required for the plugin samples – can be downloaded as part of the overall (59.7 Mb) BI Samples ZipfileDownload Samples.
Resources
Publishing PL/SQL Based WebServices
Jan 24th
This post discusses how a Web Service can be published based on a PL/SQL Package inside the Oracle Database – using Oracle 10g JDeveloper. In this article we will create a PL/SQL based WebService based on the Package we discussed in previous posts Consuming Web Services from PL/SQL – Part I: Using Java Stored Procedures and Consuming Web Services from PL/SQL – Part II: A pure PL/SQL solution using UTL_HTTP (Oracle 9i or 10g)
There seem to be two very similar ways of publishing a PL/SQL based WebService:
- Create a Java Class with a static method that will use JDBC to invoke the PL/SQL prcoedure to be published. Create a WebService for this JavaClass and publish it; indirectly you will have published the PL/SQL package
- Use the Wizards in JDeveloper to create and publish a WebService directly based on a PL/SQL package. Note that this too will create a Java Server Side Stub that invokes the PL/SQL code and gets published itself as WebService.
Apart from convenience on the one hand and accessibility of (Java)code on the other hand, there is no real distinction between these methods. We will discuss the second approach in this article. Read the rest of this entry »
Migration from JHeadstart 9.0.4.x or 9.0.5.x to ADF JHeadstart (beta)
Jan 24th
You may have seen our AMIS Library System application (ALS). It is shipped as demo-application (for JHeadstart & Toplink) with JHeadstart 9.0.5.x. We also have a BC4J version of this application, see AMIS Library System – JHeadstart 9.0.5.x (BC4J, JSP+JSTL) Demo Application released. Today I took Build 11 of the ADF JHeadstart beta program and tried to migrate this ALS application (BC4J or ADF BC as I should say now, JSP and Struts) to the ADF JHeadstart design-time and run-time. And since ALS was 100% generated, this was a virtually effortless undertaking.
Since we do not have a formal description of the migration yet – the documentation is still very pre-alpha – I just gave it a try, and before too long, I had a successful migration. Here is what I did Read the rest of this entry »
GNU utilities for Win32
Jan 24th
Windows is not shipped with a lot of tools for the developer. Simple tools like grep, sed, make are not provided. Today I installed UnxUtils. A set of GNU utilities for Win32. You could use Cygwin to do have the same utilities, but the nice thing about UnxUtils is that they are native win32 executables. In this context, native means the executables do only depend on the Microsoft C-runtime (msvcrt.dll) and not an emulation layer like that provided by Cygwin tools.
I was looking for make, wget and grep; which are included. The others included tools are:
Read the rest of this entry »
