OracleAppsBlog

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i Certification Program now available

Oracle has just released the details of their new certification programme. According to their certification page:

Based on version 11i of Oracle’s applications and Oracle University E-Business Suite curriculum, application certification requires the successful completion of a series of rigorous online and proctored exams that include real world scenario based questions. The program enables Applications professionals to pursue three certification paths: Oracle 11i Financials Certified Professional Consultant, Oracle 11i Supply Chain Certified Professional Consultant, and Oracle 11i Applications Technology Certified Professional Administrator.

Each path validates and recognizes specific areas of competency within Oracle E-Business Suite 11i applications, usage, and concepts. Application Professionals who earn an E-Business certification credential have the proven skills and training that helps keep projects on time and on budget and leads to a quicker return on investment for customers ultimately improving likelihood of successful product implementations.

I’ve just ordered and received the first CD in the certification series, namely 11i E-Business Suite Essentials for Implementers and will be providing you with some insights into what’s in the training kit shortly.

Tags

del.icio.us: applications, certification, certified, consultant, e-business, ebs, financials, oracle, professional, suite, supply+chain, technology, university,
technorati: applications, certification, certified, consultant, e-business, ebs, financials, oracle, professional, suite, supply+chain, technology, university,

Sunday, June 18, 2006

AUSOUG/OAUG 2006 Conference Series - Call for Papers

The Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG) and the Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG) invites all Users and Suppliers of Oracle related products and services to submit papers for presentation at AUSOUG/ OAUG’s National Conference Series for 2006.

We are continuing our acclaimed National Conference Series known as “Oracle with 20:20 Foresight” with a Theme of “Fusing IT with Business Strategies”.  The dates and venues are Melbourne 2 - 3/11/06 at the Melbourne Convention Centre and Perth 8 - 9/11/06 at the Hyatt.  The number of attendees is anticipated to be in excess of 1,000 Oracle Users and the capability of reaching an audience of in excess of 4,000 Oracle users.

The AUSOUG & OAUG Events committee are now calling for outlines from interested users, business and IT professionals to present relevant papers, training and demonstrations along the lines of our conference theme. Presentations should provide topical, engaging information relevant to the Oracle influenced professional Business and IT community. If you are interested in presenting at one or more of the conferences, please select the “Call for Presentations and Training”
link at http://www.ausoug.org.au/2020, submit as much detail as required to describe your paper, and we will work with you to bring this presentation to market. Submitted papers will be judged on the basis of significance, relevance, correctness, originality, and clarity.

Please feel free to submit papers on any Oracle interest areas.
Topics we are particularly interested in hearing from this year:

• Database
• Developer; Forms, JDeveloper, J2EE, JSF, XML, Web Services, BPEL, SOA, Hubs, .Net, and Fusion Middleware
• App’s; all incl GL, AR, AP, HR, Payroll, CRM,
• Higher Education
• Spatial
• Oracle eBusiness suite, Seibel and Retek, HR
• Management
• Tools & Security

The deadline for the call for papers is Monday 14th August. Papers submitted before this date will receive favourable attention from the committee. Any papers submitted after this date may not be included in the conference series. Accept or decline notification will be sent on Friday 1st September.

If you have any questions regards the 2006 Conference Series, AUSOUG committee members are happy to assist.  Please send queries to events@ausoug.org.au

Tags

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technorati: 2006, AUSOUG, conference, OAUG, papers,

Wednesday, June 14, 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

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technorati: UKOUG,

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Blog Links - Google Photos & Spreadsheets, EBS testing with Winrunner, Hyperion selects Callidus

Google begins to takes on Microsoft Office and looks like it might be ready to take on Flickr as well with the release of Google Spreadsheets and potential release of Google Photos. Top IT industry people lists (consultants and CTO’s/CIO’s) and the ERP software graveyard. Oracle looks like it’s going to have a good quarter, they’re also setting up a solution centre for SAP R/3 customers. Larry Ellison selling his house? Steven Chan talks about using Mercury WinRunner to create automated regression tests for each 11.5.x release. A story on the use of SAP at F1 company McLaren Mercedes. Lastly, Hyperion selects Callidus’ On-Demand solution to reduce operations costs and IT infrastructure complexity, as well as increase sales performance.

• “The Software Graveyard”
• Automated Testing for the E-Business Suite
• Ellison’s Buying Power?
• Google Photos Coming
• Google Spreadsheets Has No Search
• Hyperion Selects Callidus Software’s On-Demand Solution
• Oracle Likely To Report Seasonally Strong Quarter (Forbes)
• Oracle Takes Aim at SAP Customers - Sci-Tech Today
• SAP in the Fast Lane
• Top Industry People Lists

Tags

del.icio.us: callidus, CIO, consultant, CTO, ERP, F1, google, hyperion, larry+ellison, McLaren, Mercedes, mercury, oracle, photos, R/3, SAP, software, spreadsheet, testing, winrunner,
technorati: callidus, CIO, consultant, CTO, ERP, F1, google, hyperion, larry+ellison, McLaren, Mercedes, mercury, oracle, photos, R/3, SAP, software, spreadsheet, testing, winrunner,

Thursday, June 08, 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.

Tags

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technorati: certification, oracle, university,

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.

Tags

del.icio.us: alexa, britblog, expressionengine, google, mybloglog, oracleappsblog, pmachinehosting, sitemeter, statcounter, technorati,
technorati: alexa, britblog, expressionengine, google, mybloglog, oracleappsblog, pmachinehosting, sitemeter, statcounter, technorati,

Friday, June 02, 2006

Blog Links - Ellison on YouTube, Oracle acquires whilst SAP & Microsoft search, Gartner RDMS Report

Some YouTube fun with Larry Ellison, Oracle scquires Israeli Supply Chain software company Demantra, its 20th acquisition since Peoplesoft and it’s still looking for more companies to swallow – SAP says it’s not going to take the same approach. Gartner says Oracle RDMS market share is now 48.6%. A podcast on Metalinks My Configurations and Projects feature and an announcement by the OAUG of an alliance with the Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG). Also another excellent post by Steven Chan on Benchmarking your Oracle Applications Performance.

• Benchmarking Applications Performance
• Gartner: Oracle Database #1 with 48.6% share
• How to Evaluate Design Effectiveness of Controls
• Microsoft, IBM search for start-ups
• My Configurations and Projects: a faster, simpler, and more collaborative way to manage your Oracle environment
• OAUG Announces Strategic Alliance with Australian Oracle Users Group (Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance)
• Oracle Exploring More Partnerships & Acquisitions (Bernama)
• Oracle to acquire Demantra - ZDNet.com.au
• SAP chief: We won’t imitate Oracle (CNN Money)
• YouTube - Darth Ellison vs ABAP

Tags

del.icio.us: ABAP, applications, AUSOUG, benchmark, demantra, ellison, gartner, internal+controls, microsoft, OAUG, oracle, performance, RDMS, report, SAP,
technorati: ABAP, applications, AUSOUG, benchmark, demantra, ellison, gartner, internal+controls, microsoft, OAUG, oracle, performance, RDMS, report, SAP,

Oracle E-Business Suite Integration Repository for 11i and Release 12i

Steven Chan posted recently on the Oracle Integration Repository (OTN password required for access) and I thought I’d give it a mention on this blog. According to the site:

The Oracle Integration Repository is a compilation of information about the numerous service endpoints exposed by the Oracle E-Business Suite of applications. It provides a complete catalog of Oracle E-Business Suite’s business service interfaces. The tool lets users easily discover and deploy the appropriate business service interface for integration with any system, application, or business partner.

Oracle delivers a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that exposes encapsulated business functions as well-defined interfaces, as well as a robust BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) processor. Organizations can use these tools to orchestrate business processes throughout the enterprise. To do this effectively, the business services of various applications need to be discovered, described, and documented in a uniform way and located in a single place. The Oracle Integration Repository is the solution to this problem, and much more.

The site lists the benefits as follows:

• Better integration planning


• Readily available information about your business service interfaces allows you to make informed decisions about your integration projects
• Centralized information helps you assess the impact of your integrations
• Reduced cost of implementing integrations with the E-Business Suite


• System integrators can discover all their business service interfaces in one place
• Uniformity of documentation lowers the learning curve
• Reduced Maintenance Costs


• Assurance that you are using supported public interfaces

Features include:

• Unified Repository from which all integration interface types are exposed
• Updates are automated and documented
• Single source of truth for all interfaces
• Can be searched by keywords
• Navigable either by product or by the integration standards you wish to leverage
• Powerful well-designed UI helps you to easily find the data that you are interested in
• Ability to print integration information or export to CSV file format.

Lastly the site states:

The Oracle Integration Repository is an integral part of the Oracle E-Business Suite. Over time, it will grow to include the integration capabilities of the PeopleSoft and JD Edwards family of products. Until then, you can find that information in the PeopleSoft Interactive Services Repository (located here: a PeopleSoft Customer Connection login is required to access the documentation).

In Release 12, the Oracle Integration Repository will ship as part of the E-Business Suite. As your instance is patched, the repository will automatically be updated with content appropriate for the precise revisions of interfaces in your environment. But until Release 12 is available, you can explore an on-line version of the Integration Repository for the 11i10 version of E-Business applications.

This is a really good offering from Oracle which hopefully will make life a lot easier for implementors trying to develop interfaces. I’m really interested to see how it works in R12.

Tags

del.icio.us: 11i, e-business, EBS, integration, oracle, R12, repository, suite, technology,
technorati: 11i, e-business, EBS, integration, oracle, R12, repository, suite, technology,