OraTransplant

Hurrah! I’m an Oracle ACE

Last week I got a notice that I was awarded the Oracle ACE status. My profile is already listed at oracle.com, and other updates like the foum status and listing at blogs.oracle.com will follow soon. I’m pretty proud of getting the Oracle ACE status, especially since I’m not employed by an IT company with a commercial interest in having an Oracle Ace on board. I think compliments to my employer, Eurotransplant, are in place for giving me the possibilities to do the things I do and tell people about it in several ways.

I was pleasantly surprised when I got an email from the Oracle ACE program telling me I was nominated by Grant Ronald. Grant and I have been working together on quite a number of occasions ever since I started at Eurotransplant and started blogging about it in 2005. Eurotransplant’s story fits perfectly with the Oracle strategy Grant is trying to get out there to Forms users: UPGRADE and INTEGRATE. Upgrade to the latest version of Oracle Forms and then integrate it with other (newer) technologies to get the benefits of both worlds. This might seem obvious, but apparently it’s not so obvious for many Forms users. Having Eurotransplant as a successful example can help convince them of this strategy.

Remote Desktop via SecuRemote from Vista 64-bit or Linux

I got a new laptop and was tempted to install Linux as my primary operating system. The only problem is there is no SecuRemote client for Linux to connect to my company VPN. So, I decided to stick to Windows and the new laptop was shipped with Vista 64-bit. Unfortunately I found out the hard way that there's also no SecureRemote client for 64-bit Vista. So, both Linux and Vista-64 have the same problem.

I ended up with a solution of running a small virtual machine in VMWare. That virtual machine runs Windows XP, has a SecureRemote client to connect to the VPN and uses openssh to run a ssh daemon. Using port forwarding, I can now use the Remote Desktop client from my 64-bit Vista to connect to my Windows workstation at the office, via the VPN.

Here are the steps to set this up:

Installing Windows XP inthe virtual machine

• Start VMWare and create a new virtual machine with the following properties: single processor, 512Mb RAM (you can decrease later, but let's have a fast machine for installation), and 4Gb disk should to the trick
• Ensure the virtual machine has two network adapters. One host-only and one capable of connecting to the internet (probably bridged)
• Minimize the virtual machine by removing all devices you won't need (floppy, usb, and sound)
• Ensure the Windows XP CD is in the tray and the CD is mounted to the VMWare image. Then start the virtual machine and install Windows XP
• Once the installation is finished, install the VMWare tools (see the VM menu)
• To save some disk space, reduce the size of the paging file: Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance Setting > Advanced > Virtual Memory Change > Custom Size (minimal 0, maximum 256). Be sure to press the Set button to active these settings.
• To save some more disk space, disable the recycle bin; Right click the bin, select properties and check the checkbox to not move files to the recycle bin
• Right click the Windows Messenger icon in the system tray, and select open. Next select Tools > options > Preferences and uncheck the checbox to run the program when windows starts
• To save even more disk space, disable System restore (Control Panel > System > System Restore > Checkbox to turn of system restore
• Install all the High Priority updates from windows update
• Open a Command Prompt and run the "ipconfig /all" command. Note the assigned dynamic IP addresses for the host-only adapter and check in which subnet it is (normally the 192.168.232.0 subnet)
• Go to Control Panel > Network Connections
• Change the host-only network adapter to use a static IP address, but be sure to use an address is the same subnet (so replace the dynamic address 192.168.232.129 with a fixed 192.168.232.2). Use an address ending with .2 as the .1 address is used by the host OS. Set the subnet mask to 255.255.255.0 and leave the default gateway and DNS empty. You don't want your virtual machine to route internet traffic to this adapter, or do DNS lookups this way
• Go to Control Panel, User Account and set a password for your windows account. Without a password the subsequent SecuRemote and ssh stuff won't work

Installing SecuRemote in the virtual machine

• Install the SecuRemote client software (and reboot)
• Right-click the SecuRemote icon in the system tray and select Connect. Create a connection to your firewall.
• We need to make SecuRemote automatically connect the VPN without any user interaction. We can do this with a batch-file which has the unencrypted password in it. If you know a better way, please let me know
• Create a connect.cmd file in c:\program files\checkpoint\securemote\bin with the following commands:
  PLAIN TEXT
  CODE:

  @echo off
  scc setmode cli
  scc userpass vpnuser vpnpasswd
  scc connect profile

• Next, we need to make sure Windows automatically logs on and runs the batch file to open the VPN connection:
  Click Start, click Run, and type control userpasswords2.
  Clear the Users must enter a username and password to use this computer check box.
  Click Apply.
  Enter the user name and password you wish to automatically log on with, and then click OK.
  Click OK again and you're all done.
• Create a shortcut to connect.cmd in the Startup folder of the Start Menu
• Reboot the virtual machine to check if Windows XP automatically logs on and opens the VPN connection

Installing SSH daemon in virtual machine

• Next we need to install a SSH daemon to allow port forwarding. Use the instructions below (or look at http://pigtail.net/LRP/printsrv/cygwin-sshd.html for more detailed instructions)
• Create a folder c:\cygwin
• Download cygwin's setup from http://www.cygwin.com and save it in c:\cygwin
• Run setup.exe, select to install from internet, install for all users, download to c:\cygwin
• When asked which packages to install, click the View button until the Full ist is shown
• Enable openssh, tcp_wrappers and zlib
• Finish the installation
• Right click My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Environment Variables. Clikc the New button in the System Variables section. Add a variable "CYGWIN" with the value "ntsec tty"
• While you're at the Environment Variables, edit the Path variable in the System variables section and add ";c:\cygwin\bin"
• Double click the Cygwin icon on the desktop to start a Cygwin shell
• In cygwin, type "ssh-host-config -y"
• When asked for the value of CYGWIN, answer "ntsec tty"
• start the SSHD service with "net start sshd"
• Try to setup a ssh connection from within cygwin: "ssh localhost". You should be able to logon with your windows password
• Shutdown the virtual machine and reduce its memory to 192Mb, that should me enought to run this minimal Windows XP

Preparing Vista 64-bit (or Linux) host

These instructions assume Vista 64-bit, but similar actions should work on a linux host.

• Download and install putty from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
• Create a tunnel.cmd file with the following command:
  PLAIN TEXT
  CODE:

  start /d "c:\Program Files (x86)\PuTTY" /b putty.exe -ssh winuser@192.168.232.2 -pw passwd -L 33389:winhost:3389 -C

  where winuser is the user for the windows virtual machine, the 192.168.232.2 IP address is the static IP address you assigned to the virtual machine, passwd is the password of the windows user in the virtual machine, and winhost is the hostname or IP address of the windows workstation at the other end of the VPN you want to control remotely

• If you want, you can create a shortcut to the tunnel.cmd file and put it on your dekstop or Quick Launch bar
• You can now start a Remote Desktop client to "localhost:33389". It will use the port forwarding via SSH to the windows virtual machine and then over the SecuRemote connection of that virtual machine to the workstation at the other end of the VPN tunnel
• If you want you can enhance the tunnel.cmd file to also start the virtual machine:
  PLAIN TEXT
  CODE:

  @echo off
  echo Starting Virtual Machine
  start /d "c:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation" /b vmplayer.exe "C:\Users\?????\Documents\Virtual Machines\SecuRemote\Windows XP Professional.vmx"
  echo Waiting for Virtual Machine to start
  pause
  start /d "c:\Program Files (x86)\PuTTY" /min /b putty.exe -ssh winuser@192.168.232.2 -pw passwd -L 33389:winhost:3389 -C

Personal note: passed motorcycle drivers exam

On a small personal note; today I passed the final exam for driving a motorcycle. In the Netherlands, this is a three phase process; first you have a theory test to prove you know all the rules. I took this about a month ago. Two weeks ago I had driving lessons and passed my first exam (a series of tests on a closed terrain to prove you can handle the motorcycle) and today I passed the final exam in which you participate in actual traffic for about 30 minutes. This is probably a lot more testing and exams than most other countries.

So, now I have to wait for about a week before I get the actual license. Then it's off to the dealer to select and test drive a motor cycle. Hopefully I have my own bike by Christmas. That's my way of beating the ever increasing traffic jams during rush hour.

Using IFrame Shim to (partly) cover a Java applet

This week I had a conversation with someone who was interested in integrating Oracle Forms and JSF. They had some issues with the Forms Java applet and a JavaScript/CSS dropdown menu. They wanted to have the dropdown menu to appear in front of the applet. The default behavior of both Internet Explorer and Firefox is to always draw the Java applet on top. This is not something you can fix by setting the z-index or any other CSS property.

I was intrigued by this problem and wanted to find a solution. I can see it being a very common requirement to have a JavaScript/CSS dropdown menu in a web application that embeds Oracle Forms. This can lead the way to replacing the former Oracle Forms menu with a web based menu. Then, over time one can change menu-items that call pages embedding an Oracle Form to menu-items that call "true" web pages. This is clean and smooth path to migrate from Oracle Forms to JSF (or any other web technology) without a big-bang rewrite of all your Forms.

After some googling, I found the solution (aka trick). It's got the nice name "IFrame Shim". Some objects, like applets, select-boxes and iframe's are not actually drawn by your browser but by the operating system. These objects are always on top of the HTML elements rendered by your browser. You cannot put them below HTML elements with a lower z-index. The key to the solution is that both applets and iframe's are managed by the operating system. You can layer these with respect to each other with the z-index. You can create an iframe with the exact same position and dimension as the div (or any other element) you want to float on top of the applet. You can have the iframe sit on top of the applet with a higher z-index. The HTML (e.g. div element) can float on top of the iframe with an even higher z-index.

You're not putting any content or document in the iframe. It's just a trick to have your browser layer the HTML element on top of the iframe and the two of these on top of the applet. See for your self with a simple demo or look at the source code below. I've tested the solution with MS Internet Explorer 5.5, 6.0, 7.0 and Mozilla Firefox 2.0.

Fellow Oracle bloggers, please join our LinkedIn group

If you're a fellow Oracle blogger, please join the new LinkedIn group "Oracle Bloggers". This will help you to get (and keep) in touch with fellow Oracle bloggers. You'll be able to contact each other, and we can use it to facilitate things like the bloggers dinner at Oracle OpenWorld. Having the "Oracle Bloggers" group logo on your profile page might also be an asset to your LinkedIn profile, but that's your own call

If you've already got a LinkedIn account, you can also look at the current members before joining. The group will accept anyone with an Oracle related blog aggregated at orablogs.com, orana.info or listed at blogs.oracle.com. Please give it some thought, and join.

PS. If you know any other Oracle bloggers, please ask them to join as well.

If you've never heard about LinkedIn, here is their own introduction:

LinkedIn is an online network of more than 14 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.

When you join, you create a profile that summarizes your professional accomplishments. Your profile helps you find and be found by former colleagues, clients, and partners. You can add more connections by inviting trusted contacts to join LinkedIn and connect to you.

Your network consists of your connections, your connections’ connections, and the people they know, linking you to thousands of qualified professionals.

Through your network you can:

• Find potential clients, service providers, subject experts, and partners who come recommended
• Be found for business opportunities
• Search for great jobs
• Discover inside connections that can help you land jobs and close deals
• Post and distribute job listings
• Find high-quality passive candidates
• Get introduced to other professionals through the people you know

LinkedIn is free to join. We also offer paid accounts that give you more tools for finding and reaching the right people, whether or not they are in your network.

Positive evaluation for ODTUG 2007 presentation

I just got the evaluations for my presentation at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2007 on integrating Oracle Forms into Oracle ADF Faces. I must say that I'm pleasantly surprised. Two thirds of the audience rated the session 5 out of 5, and one third 4 out of 5. Not a bad score. I especially appreciate the comments people fill in on the evaluation form. Sometimes this gives a much better indication of how people felt. For me, all the comments are positive although one attendant noted it might bee too technical for some developers. This was also my fear, but as it turns out 100% indicated the technical level was spot on.

Again, I'm very happy and proud of this positive evaluation for my first ever presentation at an international conference. This makes ODTUG 2007 a memorable moment for me: my first ever paper won the Editor's Choice Award and I got a very positive evaluation for my presentation.

The detailed results are below:

Overall Session Rating

Evaluations

Technical Level

Comments

• What were the strengths of this presentation?
• Documentation
• Innovative and ver applicatble to current development.
• Possible alternative for keeping forms around.
• Tech level and code snippets
• Amazing!
• Great technical how-to content
• Very detailed, clear, held together well
• Great job!
• Very practical for my needs.
• Useful, novel material
• What were the weaknesses of this presentation?
• Probably too tehnical for some developers
• What recommendations do you have for improvement of this presentation?
• Thank you! Great stuff

Update 11 july 2007: I asked ODTUG if they were planning on publishing the average of all sessions combined. This could give an idea of how a session scored compared to the other sessions. ODTUG is not publishing these results, but the could tell me that scores below 4.0 need work, between 4.0 and 4.3 are very good, and above 4.3 are excellent. So, with an overall score of 4.67, I can be satisfied.

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

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 - 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.