OraTransplant

Log Buffer #51: a Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs

I’m honored to publish my first ever Log Buffer, the 51st edition. Thanks to Dave Edwards of the Pythian Group blog for inviting me.

Let’s get started with the aftermath of the yearly ODTUG conference. Michael Armstrong-Smith starts of with his memories focused on Oracle Discoverer. Dimitri Gielis blogs about being interviewed for the 8th Oracle Buzz podcast by Lewis Cunningham. For me personally, ODTUG has been the event of the year with me winning the Editor’s Choice Award. Another big conference, the UKOUG is finalizing its abstract review cycle, as Andrew Clarke explains.

Frank van Bortel blogs about a whole bunch Firefox plugins for Oracle users. Alex Gorbachev from the Pythian Group finally got his voice heard on being able to change your OTN email address.

I also came across a number of handy programming tips for Oracle programmers; Eddie Awad writes about regular expressions and the never-ending discussion about implicit vs explicit cursors. Gerd Volberg shows how to calculate the day of the week for non-US calendars. Finally, Lucas Jellema from Amis shows off some fancy SQL to create a conference schedule.

Performance tuning an Oracle database will always stay a hot topic. This week I found a number of articles; Tanel Poder writes about session level statspack. Coskan Gundogar talks about sub latch wait events and finally Jeremy Schneider has a very interesting part 1 article about statspack and AWR latch waits. Hang around for the second part. Another DBA topic this week was a reminder to check your local_listener parameter when using RAC by Paul Gallagher. Decipher completes the list with an example to resize a undo tablespace by switching tablespaces.

Oracle will be launching version 11 of their database on July 11. The Oracle blogosphere is getting ready for this with a number of articles. Laurent Schneider has the link to the live video webcast for July 11th. Eddie Awads has a link to an official Oracle presentation on new features. Alex Gorbachev of the Pythian Group is wondering what the name will be; 11g, 11f, 11w, or what… Gary Myers has the news that Application Express (APEX) will be included with Database 11 by default. Then there’s a whole list of blogs by the AMIS guys on specific new or improved features: Transparent Tablespace Encryption, the SQL Performance Analyzer, New sql.bsq structure, XMLType Storage Options and their First Impressions.

Although I’m a true Oracle guy, I did stumble upon some SQLServer blogs that looked interesting; Sean McCown has a handy (but dangerous - do not include yourself) script to disable all users in the database. SQLJunkies writes about a new version of SQLQueryStress being released. James Pipe has something about passing variables into an OPENQUERY argument. Finally, SQLskills has two articles on the new SQLServer 2008; table valued parameters and a list of new features.

I even found two interesting DB2 articles; Philip Nelson is writing about DB2 going more the “automatic way”, just as Oracle has been doing over the last few versions. Willie Favero has its second podcast on upgrading to DB2 for z/OS Version 8.

The MySQL scene has been buzzing with people writing their top 5 wishes for MySQL: Cybersite Consulting, Jim Winstead jr and Dormando. Ronald followed up on this with a list of 5 best practices for MySQL.

And there’s always the miscellaneous category ;-). Just the stuff that wouldn’t fit in any of the other paragraphs. Curt Monash has an interesting article about SolidDB, a memory-centric database. Sue Harper, from Oracle, has a great tip for using a screen magnifier. Also great when showing of code on a beamer. Jeff Hunter is wondering why everybody is always blaming the database. Finally, Josh Berkus has a list of golden rules for database contracting. Joshua Drake has some editions to this list.

And that’s a wrap. As you can see there is a whole lot going on in the database blogging community. Be sure to add any interesting blogs you see to your favorite RSS reader. If you haven’t got one yet, check out Google Reader. And don’t forget to add my feed

JDeveloper 10.1.3.3 has been released

I just noticed that Oracle has released version 10.1.3.3 of JDeveloper. The documentation page has not been updated yet, but there is a list of bug fixes included in 10.1.3.3.

Also note that the patchset 10.1.3.3 for the Application Server has also been released earlier this week. I can’t see the Windows version on Metalink yet, but you can get the Linux version. To download, go to metalink and go to the patches section.

BPEL4People Final Spec published

I just noticed that the final specification of BPEL4People (WS-BPEL extension for people) is released. The authors of the specification plan to submit the specifications to OASIS in the near future and will propose a Technical Committee to produce an OASIS standard based on it.

The BPEL4People specification is supported by a group of leading technology vendors, including Active Endpoints, Adobe, BEA Systems, IBM, Oracle and SAP AG. It defines how to integrate human interactions in WS-BPEL 2.0. Since the official WS-BPEL standard currently does not define human interaction, Oracle (and other vendors) currently has its own implementation of incorporating people in a BPEL process using the Human Workflow component.

It looks like this new BPEL4People standard will finally bring some standardization in the industry on incorporating people in a BPEL process. This sounds like a good thing for customers like us.

ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2007 - Thursday

Here’s the report of the last day at ODTUG. I didn’t manage to find the time to write this from Daytona. So, I ended up writing it in the plane back home.

ADF Binding Internals - Duncan Mills

For me, the day started of with a presentation by Duncan Mills on the internals of ADF Binding. He did a very good job of explaining all the files and concepts used in the ADF binding layer. Since this layer can be seen as the core of ADF, it’s important to have a good understanding.

Oracle is doing such a good job with enabling drag-and-drop development, that a lot of new developers stay away from the internals of the ADF bindings. Most of the time they are fine with the default generated stuff. In the end, they’ll have to learn ADF bindings. There’s just some stuff for which you have to go in and dig deep. Duncan’s presentation was a nice way to get to know the ADF bindings a lot better and make them less scary.

I think Duncan could have easily filled a whole morning or day on the subject, but unfortunately ODTUG only offers one hour slots. Perhaps they should consider having different slots during the conference. Some 2 or 3 hour slots would be very welcome.

Build, test, and deploy ADF apps with Maven 2 - Aino Andriessen, AMIS

Next stop was a presentation by Aino on build, test and deploy automation with Maven 2. A very interesting concept and I would say continuous build, etc. is a necessity for any serious development shop. Aino did a good job on explaining the concepts and benefits behind it and showing how to do this with Maven.

Continuous integration for Database Builds - Ken Atkins

Next I attended a presentation by Ken Atkins on continuous integration for database builds. This basically is the same concept as Aino presented in the previous slot. But, where Aino targeted Java development, Ken talked about doing the same for database development.

This is still something on my wish list. I think we at Eurotransplant would be much better of with an automated build system for the database as well (we already do Java). I was hoping to get Ken’s view of some of the problems with database continuous builds, especially with larger deployments. As it turned out, Ken’s situation is a bit different and they have a much smaller system. They can rebuild the complete database from scratch in a reasonable amount of time. I haven’t really tested yet, but I think rebuilding from scratch would be just too time consuming in our situation. We have about 650 database tables, a whole bunch of indexes and approx. 1000 database packages. That’s a whole lot of objects to create and install during a build.

Ken’s talk did inspire me to go ahead and just block some time in my agenda to get this done. This is one of the things, that isn’t rocket science to set up once you understand the concepts. But it is something that is time consuming and can have a large ripple effect. It involves getting the developers to change their way of work, and for us it basically also means the phase-out of Designer as a tool. Designer with it’s single truth repository just doesn’t fit well with a version control system allowing for branching. We’re still on Designer 6.0 without support for version control. That’s the only “old” component left in our architecture.

JavaServer Faces on Mobile Devices - Wendy Tromp

The last presentation of the day, and the conference, for me was the one by Wendy Tromp from Transfer Solutions. Se did a rather nice presentation about ADF Faces on Mobile devices and on Telnet devices. I was wondering if she would be able to fill an whole hour on this, but she did marvelously. She did a quick intro on ADF Faces and then continues with the ADF Faces Mobile solution and threw in ADF on Telnet as an added bonus.

At the beginning she appeared to be a bit nervous, but that seemed to disappear after a couple of minutes. Having Duncan Mills, as the director of Oracle product management and ADF evangelist in the room is probably not helping your nerves either

The evening ended with a lovely dinner at the water with some interesting people; Sue Harper from Oracle (product manager SQL Developer), Duncan Mills from Oracle (director of product management at Oracle), Peter Koletzke (well known Oracle specialist and co-author of the JDeveloper 10g handbook) and Steven Davelaar (consultant for Oracle Netherlands, and chief architect of JHeadstart). All in all a very entertaining evening in which we discussed a whole lot of different and very interesting topics. Always nice to here the stories from the trenches of Oracle Corporation

That about wrapped up a very interesting ODTUG conference. The presentations itself are interesting, but the biggest value of the conference for me is in meeting a whole lot of (well known and less well known) people. It is in these discussions that you learn most of the stuff. Back home, you’re sort of in your own little world and after a while it’s hard to see that there are other solutions and approaches then the ones your using. Having discussions with a whole lot of different people at ODTUG can really open your eyes and look beyond your own solutions and the Oracle marketing story.

I would like to thank all the ODTUG attendees and hope to see you next year!

ODTUG memorabilia on ebay.com

For those who have visited the just finished ODTUG 2007 Kaleidoscope conference, you should really check out the latest ODTUG 2007 memorabeilia on ebay.com. I don’t think you ever got a change to get a hold of one of these. The bidding ends June 28th 05:10 PDT.

I just wish I knew who put it on there.

ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2007 - Wednesday

I’m a little late blogging about the past days at ODTUG. It’s just that you run of after a day of ODTUG and have diner and drinks with some very interesting people. The downside to that is that it leaves no time to update the blog. Let’s start with a report of Wednesday.

Oracle SQL and PL/SQL Quiz - Alex Nuijten and Lucas Jellema from AMIS

The day started of with the SQL and PL/SQL quit by the AMIS guys. Unfortunately the turnout wasn’t that big; about 15 people. That should have been much more. The quiz was really fun and entertaining. I think ODTUG should schedule it for some sort of keynote or other session where everybody will attend. This is one of the things people might skip if they look at the schedule, opting for more “serious” presentations. But once people are there, they’re bound to love it. It’s not only very entertaining but you really do learn new stuff as well. The questions really do cover some of the more unknown trickery SQL and PL/SQL stuff.

Talking to VGO

Next stop was the booth of VGO software. VGO already approached me before the conference about my concept of integration Oracle Forms and Oracle ADF Faces. They’re into the business of migrating Oracle Forms to Java web applications. We had a long talk about their product and it certainly seemed interesting. They can migrate to a number of target architectures, ADF being one of them. They’re on the right path, but they’re not quite there yet. From the generated application you can see they do not have a full understanding of the ADF framework, particularly the binding layer. But they seemed very eager to learn and improve the product so this might change (quickly) over time.
I did a quick demonstration of my concept of not migrating Forms at all, but just reuse individual Forms as a ADF Faces component in newly build ADF Faces pages. They were very interested and thought it might be good solution for certain types of clients.

Getting XML data into and out of Oracle with PL/SQL - Ken Atkins

Next stop was a session by Ken Atkins on generating and parsing XML with SQL and PL/SQL. This was a very good presentation for me; exactly spot on. We’re doing more and more with XML and I (as many others) was a bit confused with the whole array of XML techniques Oracle is offering in the database. Ken did a good job explaining how these technologies evolved over time. This really gives some great background information. He then went on demoing the different technologies. If you’ve never done anything with XML in the database, the session might have been to much for you. There were a very large number of slides and code examples. I myself have been trying some stuff with XML in the database, which made it much easier to understand and follow.

In the end it was a very interesting presentation. Ken kept the full 139 (I think) slides in the handouts, although he skipped a lot of them in the presentation due to the one hour restriction. He did this intentionally to leave us with some great reference material. And so he did! If you download only one of the presentations from the ODTUG site after the conference, this should be the one.

dbms_scheduler: not just a revamp of dbms_job - Rune Mork

My next presentation was by Rune Mork from Denmark (if I remember correctly). He did a presentation on dbms_scheduler. It was a very interesting presentation, but since we’re in the middle of migrating to dbms_scheduler there wasn’t much news for me. Because of the migration, I just recently read up about dbms_scheduler and all its features. But I think this was a very interesting presentation for the rest of the audience. Dbms_scheduler is a relatively unknown and undervalues feature of the database. We’re going to use it to replace our existing installation of Redwood Cronacle (aka JCS).

Managing successful SOA projects: A view beyond agile science - Clemens Utschig

The final presentation of the day was with Clemens Utschig from Oracle. The turnout was quite low (about 10 people), which made it a nice sort of round table discussion at the end. Clemens had an interesting presentation on managing SOA projects, being agile, etc. But since most of the visitors of the conference seem not to be quite there yet, I guess they preferred other sessions over Clemens’

We wrapped up the Wednesday with a night out at Daytona USA.

ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2007 - Tuesday

Today was a busy day at ODTUG for me. I had my own presentation and a lot of other stuff happened. Let me go over it chronologically. The morning started of with a keynote by Ted Farrell. Besides the mandatory introductory stuff, he also did a demonstration of an ADF Faces 11g application. I must say that I get more enthusiastic about the new rich components the more I see them. There are some demo viewlets on the ADF Faces page over at OTN, but there’s nothing like seeing it running live in front of you.

Imex Systems - Ormi

After the keynote, it was time for the first presentation. There wasn’t really anything in this slot that got my true interest. In the end I decided to go to a session of Imex Systems about their Ormit - ADF/Faces tool to migrate an Oracle Forms application to ADF Faces. I decided to go their since I just don’t believe in the whole concept of migrating Oracel Forms to ADF Faces or any other Java technology. In my opinion the two worlds are just too different. The whole concept is different and I just don’t see it happen. That’s what I always tell people, but to be honest I never looked very good at the products (there are quite a few out there). So I decided to give Ormit a chance. Unfortunately the presentation went on for an hour basically with powerpoint bullets about the advantages of ADF (Faces), but didn’t show the Ormit tool in action, nor did it show the code that would eventually be generated by Ormit, nor did it demo a running converted application. In the end it was disappointing. In my opinion, the majority of such a session should have been a demo. Not showing anything makes me anxious about what the product can do and how it does it. I better stop by their vendor booth later this week, to have a look myself.

Integrating Forms with ADF Using New Features in Version 11

The next presentation I attended was by Jan Carlin, Oracle Forms product manager. I just had to see this one since it sounded 95% the same as was I was going to present next. It turned out ok. I was anxious Jan would tell all the stuff I was going to and there would be nothing left for me. Fortunately he talked about a lot of new Forms 11 features. He did also discuss and demonstrate the JavaScript API which is the basis of my solution. He just did a short demo of the JavaScript API itself and did not go to the whole ADF Faces/Forms integration thing I’m doing. In the end it would even be a possibility to plug my presentation as two or three questions from the audience were redirected to my presentation by Jan (thanks).

Some of the key things I wrote down during Jan’s presentation:

• Forms 11 is code complete!
• Advanced Queuing messages can trigger external events in Oracle Forms. I asked the question if it would be possible to run Oracle Forms in a headless mode (without user session) to handle these incoming events/messages. I can think of scenarios where you would have a background headless Forms session running that handles some AQ events and re-uses existing business logic in Forms program units to handle the request. Jan replied that this is not planned for Forms 11, but that he would think about the request for a future version. I appeared that Oracle themselves hadn’t thought of this themselves.
• Forms 11 is planned (but not guaranteed) to be included in beta 2 of Application Server 11g. This is expected in the August 2007 timeframe.
• Forms 11 will definitely be in beta 3 of Application Server 11g (without a timeframe)
• It’s sure Forms will be shipped with the initial release of Application Server 11g. So, there won’t be a trimmed down version of AppServer first, as they did with 10.1.2.
• Oracle Forms 11 will support Proxy Users in which it is possible to connect with a single dedicated user and then proxy to the actual Enterprise User. Jan thought this would not remove the need for Resource Access Descriptors in OID.
• Forms 11 will include a performance tuning tool that can investigate your form, scan the code and suggest a list of changes. The tool can be run both as a GUI or command line
• Someone asked whether Oracle Forms 11 would support Java Webstart as a deployment method. Jan replied that this will not be the case since there were architectural problems preventing Oracle Forms from being deployed using Java Webstart. The guy asking from the audience very rightfully asked why it is then possible that some people have reported to successfully use Java Webstart with Oracle Forms. Jan didn’t really have a foul proof answer for this. I liked the concept of using Java Webstart with Oracle Forms and will certainly give it a try anywhere soon.

Lunch and Editor’s Choice Award

Next was lunch and me surprisingly (at least for me) winning of the Editor’s Choice Award for best paper.

My presentation on Forms and ADF Faces integration

Next it was my turn. About 30 people showed up for the presentations. This was both a little of a disappointment and a relied. I was always afraid almost nobody would show up. On the other hand I think the subject itself had the potential of attracting a large crowd, especially with the Editor’s Choice Award.

But, Jan’s presentation on Forms 11 features only had about 40 people there. I was expecting a bigger turnout there as well. Most people at the conference still seem to be Forms developers and so I expected larger crowds.

Anyhow, the presentation itself went so-so. I think I was just talking too fast and left out quite a few of the sidesteps I would make when speaking in Dutch. It’s so much easier to elaborate on stuff and make sidesteps in your own language. When speaking in another language, I tend to keep to the absolute basics. This saved a lot of time and perhaps made the subject harder to understand.

I was under the impression that a substantial part of the audience didn’t get it. I probably went too fast for them, both in speaking tempo as jumping from subject to subject. Also, if users aren’t really confronted with the actual business problem of integrating Oracle Faces and Oracle Forms, they probably think I’m doing a whole lot of difficult stuff for nothing. I think you really have to be confronted with the problem yourself and have been trying to solve it to appreciate the solution I presented.

Anyhow, people seemed pretty content and almost nobody (only one) left the presentation during the session. That’s a good thing, because there are also presentations that end with half the crowd they started off with.

Forms-a-Lot

The ODTUG people (board and others) seemed to appreciate my effort with the integration paper and presentation. They asked me if I’m willing to present at an upcoming ODTUG event on Oracle Forms alone. It sounded really tempting, so I attended a meeting with a couple of the ODTUG and Oracle people on setting up an initial draft schedule for that event. Very interesting indeed and I was honored to be asked for this. All the other guys seem to be well known speakers like Duncan Mills, Peter Koletzke, Jan Carlin, and others. Wouldn’t it be great to have your name in such a list of speakers. I’m not sure if I would fit in. I’m not an experience speaker like they are. Let’s just wait and see how it all works out.

Having the ODTUG Oracle Forms meeting did mean I missed out on the last session of the day. Day 2 is over and after blogging this I’ll have a shower and then it’s off to diner with the AMIS guys. Oracle’s Clemens Utschig will join us for dinner, so that might get interesting.

Just won the ODTUG Editor’s Choice Award

I was thrilled to just receive the ODTUG 2007 Editor’s Choice Award for my paper for the ODTUG Kaleidoscope conference. I’ll post a picture later on, because I forgot the cable to connect my camera to my laptop.

Anyhow, I’m quite thrilled with this award. It’s the first paper I ever submitted to an international conference and it’s great to receive the Editor’s Choice Award right away. The only downside is things can only go downhill from now on

It’s a nice engraved award to hang on your wall. Here’s what it says:

Editor’s Choice Award

In Recognition of Exceptional
Technical Content and Visual Presentation
in Your ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2007 Paper

Protecting Your Forms Investment
While Moving to the Web

Wilfred van der Deijl
Eurotransplant

ODTUG 2007
Datona Beach, Florida

Update 20-jun-2007: I just noticed that my employer, Eurotransplant, released a news item on me winning this award. I only wished they would have another picture on file for me. Now, how do you stay humble with all of this attention…

Update 21-jun-2007: The Automatisering Gids, a dutch IT magazine, also picked up on the news. They’ve included a news item on their site and in their feed. You can say what you want, but this does make you feel proud of yourself.

ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2007 - Monday

Yesterday (Monday) was the first day of the ODTUG conference this year. There was no choosing of sessions yet, since day 1 was the Oracle Fusion Symposium. This means there’s just one track of presentations in a larger room for all to attend.

It was a series of 11 presentations of half an hour. Most presentations are also scheduled for a full hour session later this week. Although I like the concept of a Symposium, I’m not too sure what it will do to the number of attendees to the presentations later this week. You get the feeling that most of the things a speaker wants to say have been covered in this half hour. So you might be tempted to skip their full hour presentation later this week. Such a shame if the subject, since the presenter will probably have some interesting additional details but you might very well end up missing this.

You can read about most of the presentations on any of the other Oracle blogs; so I’ll just limit it to my nomination for speaker of the day. I might be biased, but for me that would be fellow Dutchman Peter Ebell from AMIS. He’s just great to listen to. Not a moment you get distracted or bored. Very interesting presentation and he’s really taking you by the hand to discuss some of the BPEL features, mainly involving Human Workflow. For us, this is also relevant at the time since we’ve just started our first BPEL implementation which uses Human Workflow quite heavily.

Today, we’re up for the first day of parallel sessions. So now I really have to look at the schedule and pick the ones to visit. This is always the hard part. Sometimes there’s a slot with nothing that sound truly interesting but at other slots you have 3 or 4 presentations you would like to attend. You’re always afraid to pick the (afterwards) disappointing one and hear from others how great the presentation was you missed out on.

At least I don’t have to doubt which presentation to attend after lunch (slot 3). That’s when I’m up. I’ll have my presentation from 2:45-3:45 PM. Let’s hope some people show up. I would hate for (almost) nobody to show up. Franky that would disappoint me a bit. I think the subject (integrating Oracle Forms and ADF Faces) is very interesting to a large part of the attendees of this conference. Also, Lucas Jellema plugged my session yesterday in the experts panel at the end of the day. Let’s hope that has helped. Finally, I’ve also been nominated for the Editor’s Choice Award. The final results will be presented during lunch today just before my presentation. That extra little bit of attention might also help.

Enough for now. I’m heading off to breakfast and will blog later today about my own and other presentations.

ODTUG paper nominated for Editor’s Choice Award

I am honored that my paper on integrating Oracle Forms and Oracle ADF Faces has been nominated for the Editor’s choice award for the ODTUG 2007 Kaleidoscope conference. I’m especially thrilled since this is my first ever officially submitted paper for a conference and to get a nomination right away is wonderful. I would also like to congratulate the guys from AMIS for getting not one but two nominations.

I arrived at Daytona Beach yesterday (Friday). My transfer at Atlanta took 3 hours, but I guess that’s not as bad as Dimitri’s. After arrival I checked into the Daytona Beach Hilton and you’ve got to love the view from my hotel room: