OracleAppsBlog

A day in the life of an Oracle Applications Consultant

Thursday, December 16, 2004

OAUG Connection Point 2005 - Call for papers now open

If you’re planning on speaking at or attending OAUG Connection Point 2005 the call for papers is now open.

OAUG Connection Point 2005 Conference is taking place in Dallas, Texas from June the 13th - 16th of June, 2005. The conference will be held at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Conference Center, Dallas, Texas, USA. According to the conference web site: -

OAUG Connection Point 2005 will provide you with an unparalleled networking and educational environment and will be attended by users of Oracle Applications who are seeking to maximize their knowledge, experience and understanding of the applications that they use to run their organizations.

The call for papers closes on the 7th of February 2005. I’m certainly hoping to make this conference as the OAUG events are normally very well attended.

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Finally!! - Oracle Buys Peoplesoft

Well, I guess it’s good news if you are an Oracle Consultant or Implementor like myself. If you’re a JD Edwards or Peoplesoft Consultant or Implementor it could be interesting times.

After a long and protracted take over battle, Oracle has finally bought Peoplesoft. I remember thinking at the beginning of Oracle’s take over efforts that it was going to happen one way or the other and so it has. Fortunately, Oracle in taking over Peoplesoft has also managed to swallow up J.D. Edwards so now they only really have SAP, Microsoft and the Open Source Movement to contend with. You can check out the official press statement here. I noted with interest the following lines in the press statement: -

This merger works because we will have more customers, which increases our ability to invest more in applications development and support. We intend to enhance PeopleSoft 8 and develop a PeopleSoft 9 and enhance a JD Edwards 5 and develop a JD Edwards 6. We intend to immediately extend and improve support for existing JD Edwards and PeopleSoft customers worldwide.

I guess this offers some relief to Peoplesoft and J.D. Edwards customers in the short term but knowing how difficult it could be to integrate these products
into Oracle E-Business Suite I wouldn’t be surprised if Oracle decides to kill both of them and just retain the customers and some of the skills and infrastructure used to build, distribute, market and sell these products.

Also check out the Oracle Peoplesoft Page for more in depth information on the deal.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Oracle Blogs at OpenWorld San Fransisco

OpenWorld San Fransisco has just come to an end and I must say I am sad that I wasn’t able to attend. However, the Oracle online offering made up for it - this post highlights the key features of the site.

I thought the Oracle OpenWorld Online site featuring what was happening at this years conference in San Fransisco was particularly good. Although I missed the conference I felt like I was there since I was able to get updates every day in a variety of media formats as highlighted below: -

• Keynotes
• Sessions
• Online Demos
• Blogging Center
• Webcams
• Photo Gallery
• Team Oracle Extreme
• Club Oracle

I had a 2 hour train trip from Hengelo to Schipol today so I downloaded some of the keynotes last night and watched them on the journey - it helped ease the boredom. What I thought was particularly good development for the blogging community was the Blogging Center

where there were contributions from a number of well known Oracle Bloggers as follows: -

• Sergio Leunissen
• Torsten Reichert
• Mark Rittman
• Pete Finnegan
• Don Shade
• Steve Muench
• Steve Anderson
• Bob Watkins
• Jonas Jacobi

I enjoyed reading all the contributions but in particular though Mark Rittman’s effort was really good.

Friday, December 10, 2004

Discoverer Viewer and Portal Integration Demonstration

I recently came across two online video demonstrations of Oracle Discoverer Viewer and its Integration into Oracle Portal on Oracle’s Discoverer Page. This post contains the links to the videos.

According to the Oracle Discoverer Page: -

Discoverer is an intuitive ad-hoc query, reporting, analysis, and Web-publishing tool that empowers business users at all levels of the organization to gain immediate access to information from data marts, data warehouses, online transaction processing systems and Oracle E-Business Suite.

Online demos are here: -

• Discoverer Viewer
• Discoverer Portal Integration

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Oracle E-Business Suite 11.5.10 - Vision Instance

This post contains details of a publicly accessible Oracle Application 11.5.10 Vision instance.

When I met Karen Brownfield at an Atlanta Oracle User Group  meeting two weeks ago she mentioned that Solution Beacon  (who currently host a freely accessible 11.5.8 and 11.5.9 Vision Instance) would shortly be hosting a publicly accessible 11.5.10 instance. I noticed over the weekend that this instance is now available. I think providing this type of facility for public access is extremely cool. All you have to do is fill out the free registration and you are allocated a user name and password.

I’ve noticed there’s quite a few new modules and a slightly new look and I hope to be writing on these over the next couple of months. You can access this instance here and you will need to run through the installation of the new version of Jinitiator (1.3.1.18). I would advise you to de-install any existing Jinitiator versions you have. I performed the install on my new IBM X40 laptop (which came with my new job) and since there were no prior versions of Jinitiator I haven’t run into any issues. Also remember that if you have any pop up blocking software installed, you should allow pop ups for the Vision Instance URL as the Jinitiator software install will not start with popup blocking on the URL.

Well done to Solution Beacon for providing this instance and I hope readers enjoy accessing this system and taking a look at what’s new.