Weblog for the AMIS Technology corner
Archive for June, 2007
MyFaces Trinidad – using AJAX (PPR) for Row and Column Summaries in Tables
Jun 30th
The built in Partial Page Rendering mechanism in Apache MyFaces Trinidad helps us implement AJAX-style features such as immediate calculation/derivation, validation, and conversion as well hide/display page element and refresh lists of values. Most of the PPR infrastructure can be used without any programming, in a completely declarative way. However, there are some exceptions, such as having non-MyFaces Trinidad components (JSF components from other libraries) initiate a PPR request or having such non-MyFaces Trinidad components refresh during a PPR request.
Another situation where programmatic intervention is required is with the table component. Usually, a component is made to trigger refresh of other components by adding the id for that triggering component to the partialTriggers attribute of the dependent components. However, in a table, we do not know beforehand what the id values of the input elements will be: first of all we do not know the number of rows there will be and second of all, the id value is made unique by the JSF framework by adding :0, :1, :2 etc to elements in each row. In this case, using the partialTriggers attribute is not going to help us.
In the example we have a list of customers and for each customer the Date of Birth. Based on the Date of Birth, the Current Age is calculated within each row – for each customer, for example 97 for my grandmother. Additionally, we calculate the average age for all our customers. Currently that age is 46.
Now if the date of birth for one of the customers changed
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JDeveloper 10.1.3.3 Patch Release available on OTN
Jun 30th
As of yesterday, the JDeveloper 10.1.3.3 release is available for download on OTN: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/jdev/htdocs/soft10133.html. Apparently, this release is only a patch release with bugfixes (see http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/htdocs/10.1.3.3/fixlist.htm for an overview of the fixes in this release) and no new functionality. There is no new documentation set (http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/jdev.html ).
One fairly interesting bug that was fixed: 5682799 NO WAY TO GENERATE DIFFERENT TREE ICONS. I have yet to check out how it was fixed, but I have ran into it in the past. There is also a number of fixes in the BPEL and ESB Design Time.
ODTUG Kaleidoscope: HOTSOS Instrumentation Library for Oracle
Jun 29th
Last week six of us at AMIS attended the ODTUG Kaleidoscope conference in Daytona Beach, FL. I always need some time to digest all the information that was presented so that’s why I am writing this Blog now.
One of the sessions I really enjoyed was given by Eric Evans from Hotsos, titled "Oracle Code Instrumentation, or How I Stopped Worrying and Love Properly Scoped Trace Files". He talked about the Open Source project called HOTSOS Oracle Instrumentation Library. The presentation was all about, well…. Instrumentation.
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Long expected patch for SOA Suite available
Jun 29th
The long expected patch set to upgrade the SOA Suite 10.1.3.1 to 10.1.3.3 is available on metalink (patchnr. 6148874).
DBConsole 11g (part 3) – Transparent Tablespace Encryption and Alerting…
Jun 28th
Triggered a little bit by a post of Christo Kutrovsky from The Pythian Group, this post will be about one of the new features on tablespace level: Transparent Tablespace Encryption
Until now you were able to encrypt a column or table. When a user inserts data into an encrypted column, transparent data encryption automatically encrypts the data. When users select the column, the data is automatically decrypted. After the selection, the data is re-encrypted.
Transparent Tablespace Encryption
Oracle 11g adds now the possibility to encrypt a complete tablespace, instead of only a column or a table. Tablespace encryption makes use of encryption keys in a wallet outside the database.
Creation of encryption keys and control of security can be handled via the Oracle Enterprise Manager DBConsole. Read the rest of this entry »
Oracle Business Intelligence Standard Edition One – now available.
Jun 27th
Last week I noticed that the long awaited Oracle Business Intelligence Standard Edition One was available on e-delivery download site and on Monday (25 June 2007) Oracle officially announced the general availability of Oracle Business Intelligence Standard Edition One.
Oracle Business Intelligence Standard Edition One is based on the Siebel Analytics stack of products and consists of the following products:
• Oracle BI Publisher (XML Publisher)
• Oracle BI Answers (ad hoc reporting and analysis tool)
• Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards
• Oracle BI Server
• Oracle Database 10g Standard Edition One
• Oracle Warehouse Builder
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DBConsole 11g (part 2) – Using the SQL Performance Analyzer
Jun 27th
Now straight into the more interesting Oracle 11g DBConsole features. Let’s start using the SQL Performance Analyzer and doing so make use of Replay. The Performance section of the DBConsole utility has a link to Advisor Central. The Advisor Central has again two sections: The Checkers section and the Advisors section.
From the Advisor section you are able to click on the SQL Performance Analyzer link. Read the rest of this entry »
DBConsole 11g (part 1) – An introduction of the new version
Jun 26th
Thinking about my first post on Oracle 11g (Beta) I realized that I didn’t mention another great addition to the Oracle (DBA) toolset. OK, of course, it isn’t new as such but… The DBConsole was already introduced in Oracle version 10g. Just like using the Database Configuration Assistant, it gives you a first glance of changes and new features introduced in Oracle 11g. That there are a lot of changes (at Oracle Open World 2006 it was said a grand total of 482) and some of them can be found, configured and used via the DBConsole.
Until this moment, I focused in general on new XMLDB functionality. So my experiences described here are also my first impressions, during my short discovery adventure using the DBConsole.
Presenting: the freeware Quest CodeGen Utility – great for PL/SQL (and for other database and non-database related development) (AMIS Academy, 27-jun-2007)
Jun 26th
Wednesday 27th June, during the 4th AMIS Academy, Patrick Barel from VDA will present an introduction on QCGU, Quest CodeGen Utility – a freeware utility from Quest, inspired and co-developed by Steven Feuerstein. The QCGU tool can be seen as a Design Pattern Factory or Template Driven Code Generator. It comes loaded with a large number of PL/SQL oriented templates and hundreds of scripts containing reusable code and templates for
PL/SQL developers and Oracle DBAs. Best of all, the script repository is
extensible: you can create your own application-specific templates and establish
your own toolbox of handy utilities.
Patrick will demonstrate the tool, hand out some goodies and try to inspire us into using QCGU to make our lives easier and his personal time investment in this tool even more worthwhile. QCGU can be downloaded from: http://www.qcgu.net/index.php .
You can attend this presentation -which is part of the AMIS Academy, sporting 14 additional presentations as well – by registering at: http://www.amis.nl/evenementen .
Oracle 11g: New sql.bsq structure
Jun 25th
Probably one of the oldest database scripts around is the sql.bsq file. First comments described in the heading of this file date from 1994 ("anori – 11/17/94 – ADT support tables and columns"). In the "old days", the days when I started (Oracle version 6, 7), it was common to alter this file a little bit, regarding table storage options, so it fitted our data dictionary tablespace layout. The purpose of these alterations was to achieve an increase in performance and avoid fragmentation (see, for example, here http://www.ixora.com.au/tips/creation/bsq.htm, for some information about the approach in "those" days).
The sql.bsq file is called during database creation and creates, among others, the data dictionary.
During a discussion with Oracle Development I wanted to check how the preferred data types were defined during database creation. I got side-tracked. The sql.bsq resides in the "$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin" directory. In Oracle 11g the sql.bsq file has been redefined. It looks like a Dutch person had his hands on it ("jklein – 08/01/05 – diag 11g – split-up into units"); "klein" is small in Dutch. I guess this ("klein") sounds somewhat appropriate in this context (splitting up sql.bsq).
Re-organized
As nowadays common for the catalog.sql script, the sql.bsq script contains references to other scripts. Most of them contain nothing new, just got a new
placeholder.
Files called from within the sql.bsq file are:
