Weblog for the AMIS Technology corner
Archive for September, 2008
Oracle Data Mining meets performance method “GAPP”
Sep 29th
Sunday 21 September 2008 at Oracle Open World, I had the opportunity to present my method "GAPP" once more (HOTSOS 2008 and Planboard may 2008). This time I also mentioned how the method can be used with Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). For people not knowing what "GAPP" is all about I give a small introduction to the method. I also like to tell you why I started with “GAPP” in the first place and what the added value is of the method above other methods.
"GAPP" means General Approach Performance Profiling and can be used to find out where in your architecture the most wait time variance can be explained from your business process. "GAPP" makes it possible with very little data, in higly complex technical infrastructures, still be able to find the performance bottlenecks for a specific business process. The nice thing about the method is that it is not only able to pinpoint a bottleneck which is already there, it is also able to pinpoint a future bottleneck in a normal running system. This is something what only "GAPP" can do.
What makes “GAPP” special:
- The method can analyse the full infrastructure, so from front-end to back-end
- The method is not focussing on one piece of the infrastructure, like only the database
- The method is able to predict how the response time of a business process will react on changes in involved factors
- The method is able to predict when a certain bottleneck will evolve to a real problem
(Dutch) Woensdag 8 oktober: KC PL/SQL Developer onder de loep (met spreker Theo Tol)
Sep 29th
In het midden van de 90-er jaren waren er heel weinig en vrij beperkte ontwikkeltools beschikbaar voor het ontwikkelen van PL/SQL. Tegenwoordig is dat heel anders en zijn er verschillende leveranciers van IDE’s voor het ontwikkelen van en beheren van databaseobjecten en databasecode. Toad for Oracle van Quest en SQL Developer van Oracle zelf zijn de meest bekende en meest gebruikte.
Kom op donderdag 2 oktober naar de sessie “Verslag van Oracle Open World”
Sep 26th
Zoals je wellicht hebt gemerkt was afgelopen week in San Francisco de Oracle Open World conferentie. Via deze blog hebben we al over allerlei ontwikkelingen op hoofdlijnen iets verteld. Aanstaande donderdag 2 oktober gaan we in veel meer detail vertellen over onze week op OOW. Dit is je kans om in drie uur te worden bijgepraat over de conferentie, een aantal demo’s te zien en met ons team van OOW-gangers in discussie te gaan. De sessie opent vanaf 16.15 uur en vindt plaats in ons kantoor in Nieuwegein. Toegang is uiteraard gratis. Zie link naar sesssie registratie – voor meer details en om je aan te melden voor deze sessie.
De komende maanden vinden bij AMIS "in depth" masterclass KC bijeenkomsten plaats met daarin gelegenheid ook zelf aan de slag te gaan met de nieuwe tools en trucs die we introduceren en veelal ook demonstreren.
Onderwerpen die je kunt verwachten:
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Incentive Compensation – Classification Ruleset stays in status Install Pending.
Sep 26th
Recently we where doing a test at our customer site and part of that test was changing an existing Classification Ruleset. This had been done before, but for some reasons when we tried it then the Synchronization of the Rulesets completed successfully but the Ruleset itself stayed in status Install Pending. With a Ruleset in this status you can’t do any calculations in Oracle Incentive Compensation.
We looked at metalink but couldn’t find anything. We issued a SR with Oracle, they couldn’t find anything either and kept us waiting for over 2 month. In the meanwhile another project also required us to change the Ruleset, but we couldn’t wait much longer. So I started working my way to the trace files for the Synchronize Rulesets myself. A big file with a large number of queries. It was the first time I’ve really looked at a trace file so maybe I was a bit lucky when I stumbled upon this step:
select oracle_username fromAPPS.fnd_oracle_userid where install_group_num = 1 and read_only_flag = 'U'
How to change the retained earnings account in General Ledger
Sep 26th
Changing the retained earnings account in General Ledger is pretty easy. Just go to the define Set of Books form and change the retained earnings account. But is this a proper method?
No it isn’t. If you change the retained earnings since 11i there will be a warning displayed. In this warning also the steps that you have to perform are displayed.
This warning appears if you change the retained earnings account from one account into another account. Off course this new account must exist in your SOB.
Oracle Application Test Suite – for functional and load/stress testing of Web Applications (including Applets) & Web Services
Sep 26th
A recent acquisition by Oracle involved a company called Empirix, that sold its e-Test Suite product to Oracle. Oracle is now integrating this product with Enterprise Manager, under the new Oracle Application Testing Suite label. The e-Test Suite is used for functional – black box – testing of Web Applications (those applications with a client that communicates via HTTP with a backend, including Applets and to some extent WebServices). The scripts recorded for functional testing – from the actions performed by the user –
can be – parametrized if necessary – used for load or stress testing. The test process as a whole can be managed with the Oracle Test Manager for Web Applications, which sits on top of a repository that will hold (Functional) Requirements, associated Test Plans composed of one ore more individual test cases (that correspond with the tests defined in the Load Test tool) and records issues found with executing the test plan and individual test cases. The tool generates reports and dashboards with charts.
Note: the picture shows theUI for Oracle Functional Testing for Web Applications. On the left hand side you see a tree with test cases – and on the right hand the ‘embedded browser’ with the application & page currently being test-script-recorded.
Extreme performance introduced by patchset 11.1.0.7 smart scan
Sep 25th
Larry yesterday did his keynote here at Oracle Open World introducing the "Oracle(R) Exadata Storage Server". This morning I attended a session about the technical details behind the server. In principal the server works with 8 nodes running RAC on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5. For the storage management ASM is used and since 11.1.0.7 smart scan has been introduced. Smart scan has been designed for very big data sources used in queries, like in Data Warehouses, where tables from tera bytes are common. In principle the following is accomplished using smart scan:
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Oracle Incentive Compensation – bad performance due to Custom Flag setting
Sep 25th
While implementing some additions to the existing Oracle Incentive Compensation implementation at our customer site we got complaints from the end users about the performance of some of the processes in Incentive Compensation.
Specifically adding a new rate table to an existing plan element was taking a lot more time then expected. At our customer site this is actually done using a customization which first duplicates all existing rate tables of one month to the next month and then, after updates are made by the users, links the new tables to the existing plan elements. This linking process was taking about 25 minutes. Read the rest of this entry »
The secret is out: Oracle launches “The Database Machine” – becoming a hardware vendor!
Sep 25th
A few hours ago, Larry did his keynote here at Oracle Open World 2008. The big announcement that had loomed over the conference has been made. Oracle – in joint partnership with HP – introduces the world’s fastest hardware for running databases and especially data warehouses: the Exadata Storage Server. Proud as father who shows his new born child to the world for the very first time, Larry was positively beaming – extremely pleased with the announcement and the achievement. And the fact that he could throw punches at different competitors this year – not Microsoft – but companies like Teradata, Netezza and to some extent other hardware vendors like IBM and NetApp.
The concept of the Exadata sounds pretty simple: Read the rest of this entry »
OOW Sneak preview of Database Excel-erator – on the ADF Desktop integration
Sep 24th
One of the sessions I attended yesterday at OOW was by Juan Camilo Ruiz, Product Manager for Oracle Development Tools. His talk was titled ‘Introduction to Oracle ADF Desktop Integration; An Office front-end for ADF Applications.’
He showed how we will be able to use Excel as the client for ADF applications. Instead of having users go into a Swing Desktop client or the ADF Faces Web interface, they can use the tool they are perhaps most familiar with to review, analyze and manipulate the data. Excel is a client to the ADF Model and Business Services through which it downloads the data and uploads the data when the user submits the changes.
Note that the Excel worksheet can taken off-line and the user can work on the data – potentially huge sets of it – in disconnected mode (on the air plane for example where despite all the cloud computing initiatives connectivity still is a scare commodity) only to have it synchronized when it becomes connected again. It is a bit like mobile devices that can work in disconnected mode and synchronize once a connection is available again – but it is Excel behaving in that way. From a developer’s point of view, developing the Excel client for ADF is somewhat different from developing an ADF Faces client inside JDeveloper, but is very similar to. For example, the Data Control palette that lists all available data sources and operations is available in the Excel design time and hot-cells (data bound cells) can quickly be created using the data controls, in much the same way as we do in JDeveloper proper. Read the rest of this entry »
