OracleAppsBlog

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

JD Edwards Blog by Andy Klee at ITtoolbox

There’s a new JD Edwards blog at ITtoolbox called What’s Hot & What’s Not with JD Edwards. Looks like it’s going to have some good content.

The About section of the Blog says:

Welcome to my blog for the JD Edwards community. I’ve been a JD Edwards consultant for the past 16 years, and in the last 5 years I’ve headed up Klee Associates, Inc, providing consulting and training services for JD Edwards, Oracle, and SAP clients. Reading this blog will keep you up to date on the important (and no so important) happenings at Oracle, the current custodians of the JD Edwards product line.

The Author Bio reads as follows:

As President of Klee Associates, Andy leads one of the premier independent JD Edwards consulting firms in North America. He considers himself very fortunate to have been able to attract some of the best people in the business to the Klee team. He is totally committed to differentiating Klee Associates from the teaming masses of consulting firms roaming the ERP landscape.

He started with JD Edwards in 1989 and has been involved in training, consulting, and project management for over 16 years. He was one of the first consultants to implement the Energy and Chemical Suite. He also has over 10 years experience with Advanced Pricing, dating back to before the first release on A7.1.

Andy developed the concept of Mastery Workshops for the install base in 2001, and is busy creating more value-add services for both new clients, and the install base. In late 2002, Andy made a decision to start SAPtips, and OraTips was rolled out in mid 2005.

Andy moved to the Western Slope of Colorado in 1999 after living 22 years in Denver.

Andy’s first post is entitled Blog 1 - What’s Up (or Down) With Fusion? and makes this interesting statement:

Gazing into my crystal ball, I predict that by 2008, Oracle will release Fusion Financials. That will allow them to claim victory, but still leave most of us wondering when there will be enough rationale to make the move. The whole thing will be done by 2014, forcing Oracle to extend the 2013 deadline for support for World and EnterpriseOne to 2016.

I like what Andy has done here and I’m sure it will educate people as to what’s going on in Project Fusion. Recommend you add the ITtoolbox Popular Blogs and New Blogs RSS feeds to your feed reader.

Tags

del.icio.us: andy+klee, ITtoolbox, JDEdwards, oratips,
technorati: andy+klee, ITtoolbox, JDEdwards, oratips,

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Oracle and Profit Magazine now have RSS feeds

I recently blogged about Oracle adding extensive RSS support to the OTN forums. Yesterday I noticed that both the Oracle and Profit Magazine now have RSS feeds you can subscribe to. Subscribing to the feeds means you’ll be notified of what’s in a new issue of each of these magazines.

It’s nice to see that Oracle is taking RSS seriously and attaching feeds to most areas of their site. My only complaint to date is that they haven’t attached an RSS feed to their Press Releases so I have to visit the site every day to see whether it’s been updated rather than receiving a notification via RSS.

Links to the feeds:

• Oracle Magazine
• Profit

Tags

del.icio.us: magazine, oracle, oracle+magazine, profit, profit+magazine, RSS,
technorati: magazine, oracle, oracle+magazine, profit, profit+magazine, RSS,

Monday, August 22, 2005

Oracle ACE program

Congratulations to Mark Rittman, who’s just blogged that he’s been awarded the “Oracle Magazine Editor’s Choice” award for “Oracle ACE of the Year 2005”, and has just taken part in an interview that’ll appear in Oracle Magazine in Nov/Dec 2005.

What’s an Oracle ACE?

According to the Oracle ACE site:

To foster the growing community network that is a fixture of the Oracle “ecosystem,” Oracle has launched the Oracle ACE program, which formally recognizes Oracle advocates with strong credentials as “activists” in that network.

Oracle ACEs are technically proficient and eager to share their experience, whether through writing books, articles, or blogs, speaking at events, participating in OTN Discussion Forums, or simply serving as Oracle advocates in their respective organizations. Candidates are nominated by either existing Oracle ACEs or Oracle product management on an ongoing basis and ratified by a nomination committee.

I think this program is a great way to encourage individuals to promote your organization and associated products. You’ll notice when reading through the Oracle ACE profile’s that some of the ACE’s have their own blogs and most of the individuals mentioned have written thousands of posts on the OTN forums.

Mark’s blog covers the more technical aspects of Oracle and inspired me to create a blog that was more applications orientated. Looking forward to a meet up of all the Oracle bloggers at the UKOUG conference.

I’m really interested to see who the other winners are in the Oracle Magazine Editor’s Choice awards for 2005 and will update the blog when I find out.

Tags

del.icio.us: ACE, magazine, mark+rittman, oracle,
technorati: ACE, magazine, mark+rittman, oracle,

Monday, August 15, 2005

Oracle Technology Network (OTN) Forums now have RSS support

Been meaning to blog about this since it was announced but only remembered to now. The OTN forums now have extensive RSS support i.e. you can subscribe to entire categories or an individual discussion.

You’ll find a comprehensive listing of RSS feeds you can subscribe to here.

Justin Kestelyn announced this on the OTN blog and had this to say:

Thanks to a major software upgrade (we’ve gone from v2.6.5 of Jive to 4.1.2), the OTN discussion forums now include native RSS feeds, user status levels, more accurate and reliable search, and a much improved UI.

Excellent work, congratulations to the OTN team!

Tags

del.icio.us: forums, justin+kestelyn, network, oracle, oracle+technology+network, OTN, RSS, technology,
technorati: forums, justin+kestelyn, network, oracle, oracle+technology+network, OTN, RSS, technology,

Sunday, August 14, 2005

A Better Learning Environment (ABLE) at Harvard University

This post discusses the Harvard University systems support site and the use of Oracle 11i and Peoplesoft at this institution.

A Better Learning Environment (ABLE) is a support site for users of Harvard Universities systems. More specifically, the site provides support for Financial Applications (Oracle), HR Applications (Peoplesoft), Reporting Applications (Financial and HR) and for Harvard’s Central Administration Staff.

The resources available at the site include: -

• Forms
• Policies
• Rates & Schedules
• Work Instructions & Processes

Of particular interest is the section on Chart of Accounts (CoA) which outlines the account structure they implemented at Harvard.

For Financial Applications Harvard runs Oracle eBS and you can read about their upgrade to 11i from 11.0.3 in January 2003 here. According to the newsletter the upgrade introduced a new look and feel, new login techniques, and a new method of navigation for Web Voucher, General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Budget Tool, AWS2, HUDINI, and Applications Administration.

In November 2004 the University upgraded from 11.5.5 to 11.5.9 which you can read about here.

The Universities Administrative Systems e-news is an interesting insight into how ERP systems are run and maintained. According to the site:

The Office of Human Resources publishes a semimonthly electronic newsletter for users of University financial, HR, and reporting systems, policies, and procedures. It contains:

• Updates on projects underway to build or improve University administrative systems
• Information about new University financial, HR, and reporting policies, procedures, and forms
• Reminders about upcoming deadlines and cutover dates
• Tips and tricks for working more easily or productively

On the e-news site you will also find back issues of the publication as well as a useful index by topic.

Tags

del.icio.us: 11i, ABLE, accounts, harvard, oracle, peoplesoft, support, university, upgrade,
technorati: 11i, ABLE, accounts, harvard, oracle, peoplesoft, support, university, upgrade,

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

HTML DB and Apps

I heard a lot of good about HTML DB. I know the Ask Tom forum was built with HTML DB. I read articles on the responsive technet forum.

I was wondering if anyone has used already HTML DB together with Apps. How was it installed? How far have you integrated Apps with HTML DB? I wonder if Oracle has plans to put HTML DB in the technology stack of eBusiness 12? A lot of questions, I know, but we have taken the decision to give it a try.

Installation was not that hard and we are now evaluating some apache configuration issues. The first integration tests with HRMS security are giving us a few headaches, but we will see how we can overcome the actual issues.

If anyone wants to share some experiences and insight, please drop a line. 

Some interesting IT, ERP and Oracle Job Sites

Over the last two weeks I’ve come across a variety of interesting job sites which I wanted to specifically highlight to readers. It seems that more job sites are getting in to the blogging thing as well as providing RSS support. The concept of job sites having RSS support appeals to me since it means that I can find out about the latest jobs without have to wade through tonnes of e-mail subscriptions. 

Firstly, I wanted to point out that Jobserve now has RSS support for job searches. Monster, another really large job site now has a blog as well as an RSS feed available on their Career advice site. Jobster also has a blog here.

IT Jobs Watch is another interesting site I came across that gives you a good indication of earnings in the UK IT Sector. According to the site:

ITJobsWatch offers you a unique perspective on today’s UK IT jobs market. Our aim is to present you with a concise and accurate map of the prevailing IT jobs market conditions. Our goals include helping you:

• Determine the level of demand for particular IT skills with a guide to the average salary and contractor rates offered.
• Discover how various IT skills interrelate.
• Determine which IT skills are popular in specific locations.
• Determine the level of demand for a certain IT skills required by specific IT Job Titles.

ERPMate.com is a job site which has a forum mainly consisting of SAP job vacancies and advertisements. GeekInterview.com is an open database where you can share interview questions. They have 102 questions for Oracle Apps. Also of note is the site Exforsys.com which has a number of tutorials for Oracle Applications 11i. To mention a few:

• Getting started with Oracle Applications
• Concurrent Processing
• Implementing Key and Descriptive Flexfields
• Overview of Popular ERP Products
• Internet Computing Architecture

From an Oracle perspective you should check out the official Oracle Jobs site as well as this OracleJobSite which has an array of RSS feeds you can subscribe to.

Once again, I wanted to point out that I’m frequently updating my del.icio.us job site listing with new sites I come across such as the ones mentioned above, hence I recommend you subscribe to the OracleAppsBlog jobs RSS feed. You’ll also find a listing of Job sites in the Jobs folder of the OracleAppsBlog Blogroll. If you want to see a job site with an interesting and sometime humorous twist, check out Simply Fired.

Anyone know of any other job sites that have RSS feeds?

Tags

del.icio.us: 11i, applications, IT, jobs, jobserve, jobster, monster, oracle, SAP, tutorials,
technorati: 11i, applications, IT, jobs, jobserve, jobster, monster, oracle, SAP, tutorials,

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Upgrade to ExpressionEngine v1.3.1 and Discussion Forum v1.1

I’ve just completed an upgrade to the latest version of ExpressionEngine. In addition to this upgrade, I’ve just installed the latest release of the Discussion Forum module.

According to the pMachine site:

ExpressionEngine 1.3.1 is primarily a maintenance release, providing fixes for bugs that have been reported recently, including a problem experienced by people running PHP 4.4.0.  EE 1.3.1 also has a number of small enhancements and minor code updates.

The latest release of the Discussion Forum, v1.1, enables you to submit forum posts along with weblog entries and content for your site, and associate forum posts with those entries.  In other words, you can have a “discuss this in the forums” link in your weblog/site entries. I really like this feature and I blogged about it here.

For a complete list of changes, please see the change log.

Tags

del.icio.us: discussion, discussion+forum, ExpressionEngine, forum, pmachine,
technorati: discussion, discussion+forum, ExpressionEngine, forum, pmachine,

Thursday, August 04, 2005

new beginnings for RichardByrom.com

I’ve just revamped my personal site by turning it into a blog. I’ll be spending the next couple of weeks making it look pretty and getting it to look exactly the way I want it to. 

I posted my reasons for doing this here.

Tags

del.icio.us: richard+byrom, RichardByrom,
technorati: richard+byrom, RichardByrom,

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Oracle AIM - 11i updates and add-ins

A while back I discovered a number of useful updates to Oracle’s Application Implementation Methodology (AIM) thanks to Jo Davis  – I’ve only had a chance to blog about it now. The existing version of AIM is 3.0 and I’ve posted before about where to download it. This post will describe how to download the updates and will also outline what exactly’s in the updates.

Before I discuss the various updates and add-ins that are available I would like to outline how you can get Oracle AIM working in Firefox. Personally, I still haven’t managed to get AIM working in XP using Explorer as the browser so I’ve opted to use a workaround by accessing it via the Firefox brower. Once you have performed the Oracle AIM install simply enter the text file:///C:/Method/OM30/AIM30/omstart.html into your Firefox browser and AIM should begin. I’ve noticed that it does take a while to actually start up but once it does it works fine. If you still can’t get the AIM Graphical User Interface (GUI) to start up you can directly access the AIM templates from the following directory if you have accepted the default location on installation C:\Method\OM30\AIM30\AIM30FND.

The updates for AIM are available here. Please note that in order for this URL to work you must be logged in to your OTN account and in your account details you must specify your OPN (Oracle Partner Network) number. In other words you can only access this URL if you are an Oracle Partner. At the URL just mentioned you will find a list of AIM add-ins and links to where you can download them. There is also a spreadsheet which outlines for each add-in which documents are now provided. Essentially, these add-ins provide you with updated BR100 documents which enable you to document the Application Setup for various modules.

The following add-ins are now provided for AIM:

1. AIM Foundation V3.0 R11i Add-In (Release 1) – BR100 documents for Advanced Planning & Scheduling, Financials, Human Resources, Internet Procurement, Mfg./Supply Chain Management, Professional Services Automation, Projects and Treasury Management. Installs to the following directory  – C:\Method\OM30\AIM30\Aim3r11i
2. AIM Foundation V3.0 R11i Add-In (Release 2) – BR100 documents for Business Intelligence, E-Commerce, Self Service HR, Interaction Center, Marketing, Order Management, Sales and Service. Installs to the following directory – C:\Method\OM30\AIM30\AimR11i2
3. AIM Foundation V3.0 R11i Add-In (Release 3) – BR100 documents for Advanced Planning & Scheduling, Human Resources, Internet Procurement, Professional Services Automation, Sales and Treasury Management. Installs to the following directory – C:\Method\OM30\AIM30\AIMR11i3
4. AIM Foundation V3.0 R11i Add-In (Release 4) – BR100 documents for Business Intelligence, i-Procurement, Mfg./Supply Chain Management and Service. Installs to the following directory  – C:\Method\OM30\AIM30\AIMR11i4.

To install the add-ins you must first have successully installed Oracle AIM. Then, download the add-ins to any location on your drive and unzip the files to reveal the OMA files. Double click the OMA files to install them. They will extract and when successfully extracted you should then be able to enable them by choosing the Add-ins link at the bottom part of the AIM GUI/front-end.

If you have any issues please add your comments.

Tags

del.icio.us: AIM, applications, applications+implementation+methodology, implementation, methodology, oracle,
technorati: AIM, applications, applications+implementation+methodology, implementation, methodology, oracle,

Monday, August 01, 2005

Quest Software announces End User Performance Management solution

Last week I got an e-mail from Quest Software informing me of the release of a new new end-user performance management solution which optimises the application-user experience.

According to the Quest Press Release: -

The new solution empowers application owners and IT administrators with the ability to improve the end user experience of their critical applications and assure optimal service levels by providing deep visibility into the application. The Quest End User Performance Management solution alerts users of performance issues and enables accountability by pinpointing the source of those issues, significantly reducing time to resolution.

The mail in question stated that this news was important because:

• It is the end-users of applications that determine the true value of the business applications, based on how effectively they are able to use them. End-users can include consumers browsing web sites, customers accessing external facing applications and employees accessing information internally.
• A negative experience can directly impact bottom line revenue generation or cost-cutting initiatives because it can result in lost sales or decreased employee productivity. By effectively measuring and managing the end user experience, organisations are able to better manage business objectives and ensure operational efficiency.
• End users can experience performance and availability issues despite the IT infrastructure running at optimum levels. Quest End User Performance Management solution allows IT administrators to pinpoint the issues and assist in resolution, allowing for total application performance management.
• The solution monitors transactions on both custom/J2EE and packaged applications such as SAP, Oracle E-Business, PeopleSoft and Siebel, providing a shift from the traditional monitoring markets (e.g. database and infrastructure). Monitoring from an end-user perspective allows organisations to focus on the issues that truly affect business performance.

My understanding is that this solution will make use of Quest Foglight Transaction Recorder (for active monitoring using synthetic user activity) and Quest User Experience Monitor (for continuous passive monitoring of all real user activity) to ensure application availability and optimal performance around the clock.

The only software I’ve ever used by Quest is TOAD. I think the idea of being able to monitor end user application performance is an excellent one since they are the first ones to know when anything goes wrong with the application and they are the ones most likely to be impacted by performance issues.

If any one has made use of the tools being mentioned, please add your comments.

Tags

del.icio.us: foglight, quest, toad, user+experience+monitor,
technorati: foglight, quest, toad, user+experience+monitor,

Oracle 11i Installation, Architecture, Administration and Maintenance

Recently I was asked by a reader whether I could provide them with a diagram of the architecture of 11i10. Here’s some excellent presentations you can download and take a look at if you want to understand more about the architecture of Oracle Applications E-Business Suite (EBS) R11i.

I’ve always been impressed by the quality and content of information produced in presentations delivered by SolutionBeacon. One of the first presentations I came across that provided a very good look under the hood of 11i was one entitled “Care and Feeding of 11i” by John Stouffer.

The most recent versions of these presentations that I could find were delivered by Randy Giefer at the NorCal OAUG 2005 Training Day. I’ve linked to the presentations and also quoted their abstracts below. You should also check out the NorCalOAUG Presentations Archive where there are many other useful presentations you can download.

Introduction to Release 11i Part 1 of 2: Installation & Architecture

Abstract

In the 1st of a 2 part presentation, get a “real world” perspective as well as tips and techniques to install and understand the architecture of the complex Oracle Applications environment delivered with Release 11i, including Release 11.5.10. Release 11i is the biggest and most complex applications release ever! There have been ten 11i releases with major changes to tools and technology stack. Each release addresses bug fixes and has added new module functionality along with three specific Oracle environments that must be installed for Release 11i – database, applications and web. All environments require differing levels of support but each has to be maintained to fully utilize and make the most of the Release 11i Applications. We will discuss the underlying architectures and approaches to architecture and installation that make ongoing support more manageable for the Apps DBA.

Introduction to Release 11i Part 2 of 2: Administration & Maintenance

Abstract

In the 2nd of a 2 part presentation, get a “real world” perspective as well as tips and techniques to administer and maintain the complex Oracle Applications environment delivered with Release 11i, including Release 11.5.10. Release 11i is the biggest and most complex applications release ever! There have been ten 11i releases with major changes to tools and technology stack. Each release addresses bug fixes and has added new module functionality along with three specific Oracle environments that must be supported for Release 11i – database, applications and web. Administering and maintaining these environments has become a full time job for the Applications DBA. All environments require differing levels of support but each has to be maintained to fully utilize and make the most of the Release 11i applications. We will discuss all of these administration and maintenance processes for the Apps DBA and will share “real world” recommendations for each.

Tags

del.icio.us: 11i, 11i10, architecture, EBS, john+stouffer, oracle, oracle+applications, presentations, Randy+Giefer, solutionbeacon, training,
technorati: 11i, 11i10, architecture, EBS, john+stouffer, oracle, oracle+applications, presentations, Randy+Giefer, solutionbeacon, training,