Weblog for the AMIS Technology corner
Archive for September, 2006
KC Contingency Design
Sep 14th
Last week I have given my first KC presentation within AMIS on the subject of Contingency Design. Some 15 people were present and even 2 outsiders showed up! It proved to be a very interesting evening and apparently this subject caused strong feelings with the contenders, causing lively discussions! In fact, my presentation triggered Arjaan, AMIS colleague, to present his own KC in the near future on the subject of usability especially for webshops. On top of that, Reinier, one of our account managers, has asked me to come up with a plan for a contingency scan product plan for AMIS. So hopefully soon AMIS will be offering the AMIS Contingency Design Scan! 
Contingency Design is designing websites for when things go wrong. The thought behind contingency design is that there is no such thing as a perfect website, how carefully designed even. Visitors will always get into trouble by either their own fault or because of the website itself. Contingency design offers visitors help to solve their problems.
In our day to day live we are daily confronted with contingency issues, though we never seem to notice them as such. Think of spare parts or an emergency aggregate. They help us when we get into trouble. Or even think about traffic signs. They help us to prevent getting into trouble. So how come contingency most of the times is not incorporated into websites? How many times have you had the following feelings or thoughts?
- This is not what I was looking for!
- Did I place that order or not?
- How do I get back to the starting page?
- I have lost all my filled in data in that form!
- Where is the page I clicked on?
My presentation contained a lot of guidelines and examples of good contingency design but most of all many examples of poor contingency design. So feel free to download my full presentation and use it to your advantage!
adpatch fails- Cannot connect to RAC database
Sep 13th
Yesterday I needed to apply a patch to my Oracle E-Business Suite 11.5.10.2 environment.
This environment consist of a 10G release 2 RAC database and two application tiers.
I needed to apply patch 4676589 (11i.ATG_PF.H.RUP4), which is about 275MB in size, zipped.
I defined 4 workers; the patch ran smoothly until I saw 2 workers fail with the following programs:
- fnd_form_custom_action.xdf
- wf_entity_changes.xdf
Spring 2.0 in Oracle JDeveloper
Sep 11th
On Oracle OTN Shay Shmeltzer has written an article that explains how to use the Spring framework within JDeveloper and how to best setup JDeveloper for Spring 2.0. Interface21 has announced that the final release of Spring 2.0 is planned onSeptember 26th, 2006.
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/howtos/1013/SpringwithJDev/index.html
Shay will show “(…) some of the nice features that JDeveloper provides for Spring developers out of the box.” Getting exited?
Oracle 10.2 EE on SUSE 10 ES
Sep 9th
I signed up a while ago for the SUSE Cool Solutions mailling list and I saw a very good step-by-step from Michel Bluteau regarding "Installing Oracle 10g R2 Database on SLES 10". Although it is not yet a supported environment; it is very good post on how to install Oracle on SUSE Linux.
Read Michel’s post here: http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/appnote/17778.html
Read Inconsistency?
Sep 8th
Riddle me this: Can an object exist in all_objects before it is created?
Well no, of course not.
I was under the assumption that if you create a table with a select-statement, a CTAS – Create Table As Select – that the select was executed prior to the creation of the table. Read Consistency dictates that the result set returned by a Select statement, returns the values as of that particular moment in time.
Look Ma, no FBI (Function Based Index)
Sep 7th
At the customer site where I work, we are using an Oracle 9i. More specific a 9.2.0.5 database.
While demonstrating to one of my colleagues when an index can and cannot be used, I noticed something strange when I ran
the same script on my laptop. My laptop has an Oracle 10r2 on it.
I told my colleague that you would need a FBI, Function Based Index, when you apply a function like UPPER to an indexed column. That is
if you would want to use the index in the first place.
Read the rest of this entry »
And off you go… AMIS started 11gR1 Beta 1 testing
Sep 6th
AMIS has been proven worthy to test the upcoming release of the 11gR1 database. After entering a lot of data in questionnaires and filling in project plans, AMIS got the approval to enter the test program. Last night I had my first 11gR1 (standard demo install) database installed on RedHat ES 3 and I must say; It went like a breeze. Read the rest of this entry »
