OracleAppsBlog

A day in the life of an Oracle Applications Consultant

News

Thursday, June 15, 2006

UKOUG RSS feeds

Some time ago when I visited the UKOUG web site I noticed that they had RSS feeds that one could subscribe to. When I subscribed to them, however, the feeds weren’t working. A recent visit to their site revealed that the feeds have now been fixed. You can subscribe to their news feed or upcoming events feed.

What’s in the NEWS feed?

• News: Champions of World seminars Invitation
• News: HR & Payroll Fusion Focus Group - White Paper Launched
• News: Quickaddress Integration Into Oracle Offers Customers Complete Data Accuracy
• News: UKOUG Finance/Projects Fusion Focus Group - White Paper Launched

What’s in the UPCOMING EVENTS feed?

• Event: 7th International Oracle Life Science User Group Conference
• Event: Apps for DBA SIG Meeting
• Event: Communication Skills - Presentation Training
• Event: Criminal Justice SIG Meeting
• Event: CRM SIG Meeting - THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED
• Event: Development Engineering (Tools) SIG Meeting
• Event: HRMS SIG Meeting
• Event: Irish Applications SIG Meeting - CANCELLED
• Event: JD Edwards World SIG
• Event: Unstructured Data

Friday, June 09, 2006

Oracle 11i E-Business Applications Certification now available

I just mentioned that the blog has now been in existence for two years. Well even before I started this blog I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of the new Oracle Financials and Supply Chain Certification track. Yesterday I got a mail from the Oracle Partner Network (OPN) which suggests that the new certification programme is now close to completion (or maybe it’s just getting started??).

The first exam in the certification track, Oracle 11i E-Business Suite Essentials, is now available and you can attend a course for it or utilise CD based training to cover the exam content. Personally, I’d rather learn off a CD so I think I’ll be going that route. I couldn’t find much more on the Oracle site about these certification tracks and what other exams are going to be included so if you know something I don’t, please add your comments.

The mail from the OPN reads as follows:

Oracle University is announcing the availability of the first 11i eBusiness Applications Certified Professional Consultant programme including:

• Oracle 11i Financials Certified Professional Consultant
• Oracle 11i Supply Chain Certified Professional Consultant
• Oracle 11i Applications Technology Certified Professional Administrator

As a valued OPN Certified partner, Oracle is pleased to invite you to participate in the pre-launch beta exam process!

Special price
During the beta period, all of the exams are available at a special price of US $50. Once the introductory period expires, all online exams will be available at US $90 and testing center based exams will be priced at US $200 (partner and internal discounts apply).

No training required
Typically Oracle requires in-class training as a part of the certification track. However, for this period of time, candidates will receive a waiver for the course attendance requirement. Those candidates who can pass the exams and finish the exam requirements without taking a training course are eligible to do so during this waiver period.
Note: All exams for a track must be completed during the waiver period.

Please be aware that not all of the exams are currently available.
The first exam, 1Z0-200: Oracle 11i E-Business Essentials, is available now! This pre-requisite exam is part of the Oracle 11i Financials and Oracle 11i Supply Chain certification tracks, and is the first step in getting certified.
Expect to see a notification as the other exams become available too.

Second year of existence

The OracleAppsBlog has now been in existence for two years. Its amazing to think its been going that long now. The blog has been much more successful than anticipated and I believe still has much more potential for growth of this blog and other related Oracle and ERP blogs . This year has seen the addition of 125 new posts and 1,400 new members as well as the introduction of the forum (with 155 topics posted to date) and wiki modules. I’m highly impressed with the functionality provided by the forum and I’m hoping that it will be used more this year. Sadly, I don’t have much time to devote to answering the questions but its nice to see other members helping me out in this area. The wiki will open up opportunities for members to document collaboratively.

I’d like to see more contributions by level 2 members this year so I’m going to do my best to get more authors and make it easier for existing authors to post. At the moment the documentation for level 2 members needs a bit of enhancement so that it’s clearer how to post blog entries, this was actually requested last year and I still haven’t got around to it!! Hence I’ve decided to take a blog break next week and focus on getting that done. One action I have taken to help blog authors is to purchase a group license for Blogjet, a really nice blogging software client that helps you edit and post blog entries. Also, if you have an article you want to contribute but don’t have the time or know how ot write it up into a blog entry, send it my way and I’ll do the work for you.

I thought it would be nice to take a look at some stats from the blog for this year. I’m not into comparing but rather like to see that the the blog has grown in terms of traffic, members and content. I’ve started playing with a number of different statistical tools this year so I can’t pull out last years stats for everything. Incidentally, reading this post on blog addiction it seems I’m pretty much there. Here’s the stats:

• Technorati Rank – 84,835
• BritBlog Rank – 16
• Top Blog Sites Rank – 26
• Google Page Rank – 6
• Alexa Rank – 156,085

According to Statcounter, SiteMeter and MyBloglog I’m averaging about 350 visitors a day and 580 page views a day. Both of those tools only work on the main page and the pic below shows what going on at the back end as provided by the Urchin stats of my webhost pMachinehosting. As you can see I’ve had a about 5 million pageviews in total this year and am averaging about 15,000 page views a day. Of course, some of this traffic is from bots and not humans so MyBloglog, Statcounter and Sitemeter are probably a bit more realistic.

I understand that the ExpressionEngine Commerce module is being released some time this year which I’m sure will make EE one of the most attractive CMS (Content Management Systems) around. I will certainly be implementing the commerce module although I’m not quite sure what I’m going to sell, I’m more interested in implementing it just to see how it all hangs together. The polling module has also been broken for a while so I hope to fix that shortly so I can get more interaction from readers in that area. The site certainly needs a redesign that will produce a consistent interface and theme between the blog, wiki and forum module. At this time last year I thought I would do a redesign myself but due to time contraints I’ve decided to hire someone to do it. It’s quite difficult to find decent web developers who know ExpressionEngine and are not busy so we might have to wait a while!!

Of course, if you have any suggestions for improvement I welcome them. I wanted to thank anyone who has made any sort of contribution to the blog to date and I hope to see more growth and better content in the coming year.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Oracle Apps Wiki

I’ve just upgraded to the latest release of ExpressionEngine (the software I use to run this blog) which has a new Wiki module. I’ve decided, therefore, to start up an Oracle Apps Wiki. I’m probably going to use the wiki to post draft articles and presentations so that I can get feedback and contributions from other members. More importantly, I’d like to have comments from readers as to how you think we could use the wiki. I’ve given access to members only as I don’t want too much wiki spam so if you’re a member feel free to play. The wiki help will explain how it should be used and there’s an RSS and Atom feed to subscribe to updates. Enjoy

The ExpressionEngine upgrade announcement reads as follows:

We are pleased to announce the release of ExpressionEngine 1.4.2, the EE Wiki module, and Forum Module 1.3.

ExpressionEngine 1.4.2 is primarily a maintenance release, resolving any bugs reported recently.  It also includes over 20 new features and enhancements.

The Wiki Module is a powerful wiki that integrates seamlessly with ExpressionEngine, providing a great solution for websites centered on community contributed content.  It is included free with the ExpressionEngine Personal and Commercial licenses.

The new Discussion Forum Module adds significant new features such as the ability to “split” or “merge” threads, “Show/Hide” capability, enhanced RSS support, and more.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Big4Guy ERP Blog

Came across this new ERP blog the other day which is worth a read. Big4Guy is blog which has confessions, thoughts, musings and observations of a Big4Guy. The description of the blog states:

Big4Guy is an online resource where I will share with you the latest news, insights, knowledge and my experiences as a Big 4 consultant. I will discuss some of the important issues which organisations are facing today in the areas of information security, security and controls in SAP R/3, Oracle Applications, J.D.Edwards, Peoplesoft and various other ERP’s. I will also attempt to provide valuable resources for individuals interested in the CISA, CISM, CISSP, and various other security certifications considered essential for entry in any Big 4 accounting, auditing and consulting firms. You are invited to post your comments and viewpoints to my posts. I sincerely hope my online journal will be useful to everyone from a budding student to a professional in the accounting, auditing, management and consultancy professions.

 

Recent posts:

• Analyzing the COSO Cube - Internal Control Dimensions
• Practical CISA Exam Tips - Getting the Fundamentals Right

If you’re an Oracle fan, check out the Oracle Applications section of the blog.