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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011

Converged Hardware Management Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 11g simpliﬁ es hardware management / 19 Kernel of Truth Chris Mason on Oracle’s Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel / 21 Simplicity by Design Leverage new Java EE 6 features to build simple and maintainable applications / 51 Simulation Demonstrates Performance Use SQL Performance Analyzer to help predict performance on Oracle Exadata / 61 On History, Invisibility, and Moving Our technologist counts on histograms, proves hash tables by example, and moves CLOBs / 65

OPEN FOR BUSINESS MySQL community wins with better innovation, support, and integration Positive Identification How ING and SUNY increase compliance and decrease risk with Oracle Identity Management 11g Oracle Excellence Awards Customers and partners excel at driving business value and innovation with Oracle technology

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omag0910pCov2p001.indd 2 7/30/10 10:32 AM 2 FEATURED CONTENT VOLUME XXV - ISSUE 1 CONTENTS

Open for Business / 30 First released in 1995 and purchased by Sun in 2008, MySQL has rapidly graduated from the realm of hobbyists to the world of business, becoming the leading open source database for many Web applications and an integral part of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) Web application stack. Almost a year after Oracle’s acquisition of Sun, MySQL plays an even bigger role in enterprises of all sizes worldwide, including the Bank of Finland, Clickability, and Gorilla Nation Media. Discover the secrets to their success. —By David A. Kelly

Cover: I-Hua Chen, Jaime Ferrand

Positive Identification / 38 Celebrating Excellence / 45

IT security is not so much about creating Oracle’s customers stronger walls as it is about creating better- and partners functioning doors and windows. And when continue to deploying identity management solutions, demonstrate those better doors and windows equate innovation, to more-comprehensive provisioning, excellence, management, and authorization. Learn how and leadership the State University of New York (SUNY) across scores of applications and and global financial institution ING are technologies worldwide. In 2010, Oracle increasing compliance and decreasing risk honored customers and partners through with Oracle Identity Management 11g. the Oracle Excellence Awards, with –By David Baum categories ranging from sustainability to application deployment, cutting-edge Java development, implementation expertise, and beyond. –By Rich Schwerin

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omag0111p003.indd 1 12/2/10 1:53 PM 4 DEPARTMENTS VOLUME XXV - ISSUE 1

Up Front / 6

FROM OUR FROM THE MASHUP / 8 READERS / 6 EDITOR / 7 News, views, trends, tools Readers tell us what Developing for Java they think. —Tom Haunert

At Oracle / 11

EVENTS / 11 RESOURCES / 13 NEWS / 19 INTERVIEW / 21 Find out about upcoming Your guide to Oracle Converged Hardware A Kernel of Truth technology and industry Webcasts, podcasts, blogs, Management Oracle’s Unbreakable events. and more Oracle Enterprise Manager Enterprise Kernel for Oracle BRIEFS / 16 Ops Center 11g simplifies Linux delivers support hardware management in The latest product news for new hardware, new Oracle’s Sun environments. features, and better data —Caroline Kvitka management. —Tom Haunert

Community / 22

PARTNER NEWS / 22 ARCHITECT / 27 UP CLOSE / 28 PEER-TO-PEER / 29 BOOK BEAT / 22 Enterprise Architecture French Connection Hack, Tweet, Repeat in Interesting Times Common business practices Chet Justice, Oded Raz, COMMUNITY Business and technology and language bring far-flung Simon Haslam / 25 BULLETIN continue to shape enterprise Java Evolves Oracle users to AUFO. —Blair Campbell architecture. —Bob Rhubart —Jeff Erickson At JavaOne, Oracle details a roadmap for JDK 7, JDK 8, and beyond. —Justin Kestelyn

Technology / 51

JAVA EE 6 / 51 BUSINESS BROWSER-BASED ORACLE EXADATA / 61 ASK TOM / 65 Simplicity by Design INTELLIGENCE / 56 / 59 Simulation Demonstrates On History, Invisibility, Leverage new Java EE 6 Quickly Define KPIs Extend Your Applications Performance and Moving features to build simple and and Scorecards That Use plug-ins with Oracle Use Oracle Exadata Our technologist counts on maintainable applications. Use Them Application Express 4.0 simulation in SQL histograms, proves hash —Adam Bien Build key performance to add custom components. Performance Analyzer tables by example, and indicators and scorecards in —David Peake to help predict how your moves CLOBs. —Tom Kyte your business intelligence application will perform on metadata with Oracle Oracle Exadata. Business Intelligence —Arup Nanda Enterprise Edition 11g. —Mark Rittman

Comment / 69

IN THE FIELD / 69 IN THE FIELD / 70 ANALYST’S CORNER Are You Change Enabled? Build Better Data / 72 Iterate and inculcate change Warehouses The Case for Integrated along with its disruption. Oracle Exadata Database Systems Management —David Ferguson Machine’s processing Efficient and cost-effective capability means fewer systems management must physical structures and also do more. —David Baum better BI. —Andy Flower

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

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Editorial Publishing Editor in Chief Publisher Tom Haunert [email protected] Jeff Spicer [email protected] Senior Managing Editor Production Director and Associate Publisher Caroline Kvitka [email protected] Jennifer Hamilton [email protected] +1.650.506.3794 Features Editor Senior Manager, Audience Development and Operations Rich Schwerin [email protected] Karin Kinnear [email protected] +1.650.506.1985 Contributing Editor and Writer Blair Campbell Advertising sales Associate Publisher Editor in Chief, Oracle Technology Network Kyle Walkenhorst [email protected] +1.323.340.8585 Justin Kestelyn [email protected] Northwest & Central U.S. Technology Advisor Tom Cometa [email protected] +1.510.339.2403 Tom Kyte Southwest U.S. and LAD Contributors Shaun Mehr [email protected] +1.949.923.1660 Marta Bright, Jeff Erickson, Fred Sandsmark, Leslie Steere Northeast U.S. and EMEA/APAC DESIGN Mark Makinney [email protected] +1.805.709.4745 Senior Creative Director Mailing-List Rentals Francisco G Delgadillo Contact your sales representative. Design Director Richard Merchán Resources Oracle Products Contributing Designer +1.800.367.8674 (U.S./Canada) Jaime Ferrand Oracle Services Production Designer +1.888.283.0591 Sheila Brennan Oracle Press Books Editorial Board www.oraclepress.com Ian Abramson, Karen Cannell, Andrew Clarke, Chris Claterbos, Karthika Devi, Kimberly Floss, Kent Graziano, Taqi Hasan, Tony Jambu, Tony Jedlinski, Copyright © 2010 and 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved. No part of Ari Kaplan, Val Kavi, John King, Steve Lemme, Carol McGury, Sumit Sengupta, this publication may be reprinted or otherwise reproduced without permission from the editors. Jonathan Vincenzo, Dan Vlamis ORACLE MAGAZINE IS PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS” BASIS. ORACLE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. IN NO EVENT SHALL ORACLE BE LIABLE Subscription Information FOR ANY DAMAGES OF ANY KIND ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF OR RELIANCE ON ANY Subscriptions are complimentary for qualified individuals who complete the INFORMATION PROVIDED HEREIN. The information is intended to outline our general product subscription card found in each issue or online at oracle.com/oraclemagazine. direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. For change of address, mail in label with the new address to: Oracle Magazine, It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in P.O. Box 1263, Skokie, IL 60076-8263. making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle. Oracle and Java are Magazine Customer Service registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks [email protected] Fax +1.847.763.9638 Phone +1.847.763.9635 of their respective owners. Oracle Magazine (ISSN 1065-3171) is published bimonthly with a free subscription price by: Oracle, Privacy 500 Oracle Parkway, MS OPL-3C, Redwood City, CA 94065-1600. Periodicals Postage Paid at Oracle Publishing allows sharing of its mailing list with selected third parties. Redwood City, CA, and additional mailing offices. • POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Oracle If you prefer that your mailing address or e-mail address not be included in this Magazine, P.O. Box 1263, Skokie, IL 60076-8263. program, contact Customer Service at [email protected]. Printed by Brown Printing

PRODUCT INDEX Product Name Page Product Name Page Java 45 Oracle Forms 16 Java Development Kit 25 Oracle Fusion Applications 13 Java Enterprise Edition 51 Oracle Fusion Middleware 45 Java Standard Edition 16 Oracle Hyperion Planning 13 MySQL 14, 30 Oracle Identity Analytics 38 Oracle Access Manager 38 Oracle Identity Federation 38 Oracle Application Express 59 Oracle Identity Management 38 Oracle Application Testing Suite 18 Oracle Identity Manager 38 Oracle Business Intelligence 14 Oracle On Demand 13 Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 16, 56 Oracle Real Application Clusters 13 Oracle Cloud Resource Model API 13, 17 Oracle Secure Global Desktop 13 Oracle CRM On Demand 17 Oracle Solaris 11 Express 16 Oracle Crystal Ball 13 Oracle Unified Business Process Management Suite 13 Oracle Data Integration Suite 13 Oracle User Productivity Kit 14 Oracle Data Integrator 14 Oracle VM 13, 16 Oracle Database 65 Oracle VM Server for SPARC 16 Oracle Enterprise Manager 19 Oracle WebCenter Suite 13 Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 19 Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux Kernel for Oracle Linux 21 Oracle Essbase 14 StorageTek Virtual Library Extension 17 Oracle Exadata 14, 19 StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager 17 Oracle Exadata Database Machine 14, 70 Sun Ray 3 Series Clients 13 Oracle Exadata Storage Server 61 Sun Ray Software 17 Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud 13, 19 Sun ZFS Storage Appliance 18

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_toc.indd 5 11/23/10 4:08:22 PM 6 FROM OUR READERS

Your corrections, your opinions, and your requests: Here’s your forum for telling us what’s right and wrong in each issue of Oracle Magazine, and for letting us know what you want to read.

WE WANT OUR PDFS So, I’d like to ask you to keep old content on I can’t get Oracle Magazine on my iPad. I’d like the Oracle Website. to download the PDF version to my iPad, and I Timur Akhmadeev can’t see any indication of a download selector. Any instructions available? I’d like to express my opinions about an Oracle Paul Peaslee Magazine archive. An Oracle Magazine archive would be very helpful because I’m a subscriber to Oracle Magazine. Is there a 1. Many articles contain fundamentals that are PDF version or an online version that would be valid for more than five years viewable on the iPad (no Adobe Flash)? 2. It is helpful to check the development of Sébastien Pouillet some past features Andreas Buckenhofer The editors reply: Oracle Magazine is now available in multiple formats: a traditional print JAVA JUSTIFICATION NEEDED format; a digital replica of the print magazine; What is the point of the article “Customize plain HTML at oracle.com/oramag; and iPad Your Application Layout” by James L. Weaver and iPhone versions, available at the Apple App (November/December 2010, bit.ly/dnTLaY), Store. Subscribers to the digital issue can down- since JavaFX Script has been phased out load a PDF from the top navigation bar of the by Oracle? digital issue. Thomas Auzinger

WE WANT OUR ARCHIVE I’m not sure if the article “Customize Your In a recent issue of Oracle Magazine, there was a Application Layout” is outdated or if it was question from Marco Pinzuti (From Our Readers, a mistake. I think people could be confused September/October 2010) about why Oracle because of the split of JavaFX and JavaFX Magazine articles are available for the past five Script. years only. The editors responded that they do Vanessa Aybar not host old articles because technology moves E-MAIL THE EDITORS quite fast. Although I agree with this fact— The Java Development Group at Oracle Oracle Database indeed moves pretty fast—I responds: JavaFX continues to be an important Send your opinions about what you read in Oracle do not agree with the approach of removing platform for Oracle, and this article reflects Magazine, and suggestions for possible technical articles, to [email protected]. Letters older content from the Oracle Website, because current best practices. Even though JavaFX may be edited for length and clarity and may be I don’t like broken links and there’s a lot more Script will not be directly supported in future published in any medium. We consider any com- “suspect” content out there, which is sometimes JavaFX releases, there are no immediate plans munications we receive publishable. completely wrong. to retire the JavaFX 1.3.1 runtime.

CONNECT: bit.ly/orclmagfb twitter.com/magazineoracle linkd.in/orclmag

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JF11_readers.indd 6 11/19/10 9:12:39 AM From The Editor 7

Developing for Java Java development has always been about more than using Java.

n the late 1990s, I attended an Oracle contribute directly to Java technology has Idevelopment departmental meeting for grown well beyond departmental initia- which the key agenda item was an update on tives. Oracle is working with partners and plans for Java development in department- industry stakeholders on contributions to specific projects. I took this to mean that OpenJDK and the Java Community Process, each department lead or manager would talk while at the same time providing roadmap about how his or her team was planning to information, technology releases, and use the latest—and future—Java technology support to the Java community. And, even to do things in product development. in light of all the passion for Java I saw in that departmental meeting more than a More than Using decade ago, everything I see today demon- Several department representatives out- strates that Oracle, Java partners, and the lined their groups’ planned use of Java Java community are more passionate about in current and upcoming projects. But the technology than ever before. the meeting discussion evolved into an exploration of what Java could do now for community: Get Connected various projects and what it needed to do In this issue of Oracle Magazine, if you’re as soon as possible for current and future looking at the print or digital edition (free projects. Then it evolved again into details subscriptions to qualified subscribers of how teams could extend Java to do are available at bit.ly/bBE6bf), you’ll see more and then contribute that work to Java CONNECT links in the footnotes of many itself. I remember one particular manager pages (including this one). These links describing—with passion, it seemed to provide contextual connections to social me—the importance of some needed media sites, including Facebook, LinkedIn, functionality in Java at the time, details on and Twitter. his team’s solution to address it, and the We’ve also updated the Oracle schedule and resources associated with Magazine Communities page at bit.ly/ developing the technology and contrib- aVgo69 with the latest magazine-related uting it to Java. I also remember thinking social media connections, as well as the that this particular Java contribution latest podcast and video channels. The project, probably the biggest Java project video channels now include content about discussed at that meeting, had the poten- Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud created Next Steps tial to be much bigger than the product by Oracle Publishing Senior Editor Jeff development project supported by all the Erickson at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 in READ about OpenJDK teams in that room. San Francisco. openjdk.java.net Get connected, take a look, and let us the Java Community Process More than Development know what you think. jcp.org Oracle’s commitment to Java has grown, of FOLLOW @java course, and the drive to use Java in enter- Tom Haunert, Editor in Chief twitter.com/java prise products and technologies and to [email protected]

CONNECT: bit.ly/aVgo69 bit.ly/orclmagfb twitter.com/magazineoracle linkd.in/orclmag

oracle magazine JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011

JF11_ednote.indd 7 11/22/10 2:22:48 PM 8 MashUp News. Views. Trends. Tools.

Remember Splash ID Mint.com App My Stuff the Milk Keep passwords, Associated with Long overdue Organize your credit card the mint.com on your home to-do lists, sync numbers, and Website (with free inventory project? them with your PINs in one secure software for money Track your calendars, get place. Organize management) this possessions with reminders via on your computer personal finance as many as 10 Twitter or text, and and then sync to app puts all your photos per record locate tasks on a your smartphone; bank accounts, and flexible custom map. Free (iPhone if your phone is credit cards, loans, fields. Import and and Android; sync stolen, records and investments export CSV files to BlackBerry and self-destruct. in one place. Build to your computer, US$10–$19.95 a budget and track and password-

ORGANIZATION ORGANIZATION APPS Windows Mobile Tasks applications). (iPhone, Android, your spending. Free protect everything. rememberthemilk BlackBerry). (iPhone, Android). US$4.99 (iPhone). .com splashdata.com mint.com maddysoft.com “If your team cannot take full advantage of SCRIBE SMARTER technology with gusto and verve, [it] will lie Tired of a leaving meetings with scribbled, nonsensical notes? With the Livescribe Echo Smart Pen and special paper, you’ll fallow—and you will fail capture the most-important points by taking notes and as a leader.” recording audio simultaneously. The same size as a ballpoint —Scott Klososky, author of The Velocity pen, the Echo has a micro USB connector, headphone jack, Manifesto (Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2011) microphone, built-in speaker, organic light-emitting-diode display, and memory storage. Tapping the Echo anywhere in your notes triggers the related audio playback. Connect the pen to your PC or Mac running the Java-based Livescribe Desktop software, and save your notes and audio files digitally. Several apps, such as dictionaries and PII RARELY ENCRYPTED translators, are available—or write your own Fewer than 30 percent of 430 Independent with Livescribe’s Java-based development Oracle Users Group (IOUG) members surveyed environment. US$169.95 (4 GB storage), encrypt personally identifiable information (PII) in all their databases. $199.95 (8 GB storage). livescribe.com Source: 2010 IOUG Data Security Survey, ioug.org

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JF11_MashUp.indd 8 11/19/10 9:28:37 AM Your Destination for oracle anD Java expertise Written by leading technology professionals, Oracle Press books offer the most definitive, complete, and up-to-date coverage of Oracle products and technologies available.

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Copyright © 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Events 11

Technology Events Oracle User Groups Boston MySQL Monthly Meetups Conferences and sessions to help you stay January 10 and February 14, Boston, Massachusetts on the cutting edge meetup.com/mysqlbos

Houston User Group for Sun (HUGS) Monthly Meetups Mobile World Congress January 11 and February 8, Houston, Texas February 14–17, Barcelona, Spain meetup.com/opensource-67 This global conference focusing on mobile technology PackerLand Users Group Meeting and business includes keynotes and action-provoking January 12, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin panel discussions; an exhibition featuring more than wi-plug.org 1,300 vendors; App Planet, an application-focused Silicon Valley JavaFX User gathering; an awards program highlighting innova- Group Meetings tive mobile solutions and initiatives; and plentiful January 12 and February 9, Redwood Shores, California networking opportunities. Get details and sign up at svjugfx.org mobileworldcongress.com. Northern California OAUG Training Day January 13, Santa Clara, California norcaloaug.com National Retail Federation priate ICT building blocks and delivery models Annual Conference without creating data silos or bottlenecks. Georgia Oracle Users Group Meetings January 9–12, New York, New York January 13 and February 10, Dunwoody, Georgia fevents.nrf.com/annual2011 Oracle University Enterprise gouser.org “Retail’s BIG Show” marks its 100th anni- Business Intelligence Seminar with versary with keynote speeches; more than 60 Mark Rittman New England Java Users Group Meetings January 13 and February 10, educational sessions covering topics including January 24–25, Geneva, Switzerland Burlington, Massachusetts information technology, online retailing, supply January 27–28, Zurich, Switzerland nejug.org chain, and sustainability; a 150,000-square- February 14–15, Oslo, Norway Western Washington Oracle Users foot exposition with more than 500 vendors; and frittmanmead.com Group Meetings several networking events. Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman leads this January 13 and February 10, class on the architecture and capabilities of Seattle, Washington wwoug.org Construction CPM Conference Oracle Business Intelligence 11g. Topics include January 12–15, Orlando, Florida enhancements to the software’s semantic UKOUG UNIX SIG Meeting fconstructioncpm.com model to support Oracle Essbase and Oracle January 19, London, England ukoug.org This inaugural conference explores critical OLAP, enhancements to Oracle Dashboards and path method (CPM) scheduling concepts and Oracle Answers, Oracle Application Development Twin Cities Oracle Users Group software solutions, and features 100 sessions Framework development, and more. Quarterly Meeting covering CPM software, theory, and project man- January 20, Golden Valley, Minnesota tcoug.org agement. Sessions on Oracle’s Primavera P3 and Global Services Conference P6, as well as a Primavera special interest group January 27, New York, New York Central Florida Oracle Users meeting, are planned. fbit.ly/cv1EfO Group Meetings January 24 and February 28, Orlando, Florida This conference includes a full day of sessions cfoug.org IDC’s Optimizing Sourcing on global outsourcing, featuring parallel tracks Strategy Conference on sourcing leadership and best practices. Topics Suncoast Oracle Users Group Meetings January 27 and February 24, Tampa, Florida January 19, Paris, France include cloud-based delivery models, the conver- soug.acomp.usf.edu fbit.ly/cAB5i2 gence of IT and business process outsourcing, This French-language event, sponsored by and emerging destinations. Boston Java Meetup February 7, Boston, Massachusetts International Data Corporation (IDC), will cover meetup.com/boston-java insourcing and outsourcing, onshoring and off- Gartner Business Intelligence shoring, cloud computing, and other information Summit Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group Training Days s and communications technology (ICT) sourcing January 31–February 1, London, England g e February 15–17, Denver, Colorado strategies available to today’s CIOs. Participants fbit.ly/atYllA rmoug.org

Ge tt y I m a will discuss how to select and implement appro- Learn to leverage business intelligence (BI)

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_events.indd 11 11/19/10 9:43:18 AM 12 Events

understanding of business, information, and technology architecture, as well as the benefits that can be realized when these domains are harnessed together.

HIMSS11 Annual Conference and Exhibition February 20–24, Orlando, Florida fhimssconference.org The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference covers solutions and technologies for patient safety and quality, regulatory compliance, and business best Talk Java at Jfokus in Stockholm, Sweden, February 14–16. practices. Topics include the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), business intel- and performance management to get broader LogiMAT 2011 ligence, healthcare reform, human-computer adoption of BI tools, gain more return on invest- February 8–10, Stuttgart, Germany interfaces, interactive health communications, ment from their use, and make better decisions. flogimat-messe.de and workforce development. Topics include advanced analytics, cost optimi- The leading international trade fair for the intra- zation, data quality and integration, and frame- logistics sector in Europe features forums and SCALE 9x: Southern California works and metrics. displays on topics including distribution, mate- Linux Expo rials handling, and information flow. More than February 25–27, Los Angeles, California DistribuTECH Conference 750 exhibitors from 20 countries are expected in fsocallinuxexpo.org/scale9x and Exhibition the 560,000-square-foot exhibition hall. At this annual Linux expo, choose from tech- February 1–3, San Diego, California nical seminars across five tracks, including a fdistributech.com Jfokus beginners’ track, a developers’ track, and a This event is the utility industry’s leading smart February 14–16, Stockholm, Sweden new system administration track for attendees grid conference and exposition. Topics include fjfokus.se interested in using open source alternatives automation and control systems, energy effi- Organized in cooperation with Java Forum for system administration tasks. The expo also ciency, demand response, renewable energy Stockholm, this conference has grown steadily includes displays and demos from commercial integration, advanced metering, test and diag- since its founding in 2007. It features speakers software and hardware vendors. In addition, nostic system operation and reliability, power from Sweden and around the world focusing on local nonprofit organizations such as delivery equipment, and water utility technology. Java and related techniques such as dynamic Linux user groups will offer tutorials on languages and agile development. New topics open source software. ARC World Industry Forum this year include cloud computing, Java perfor- February 7–10, Orlando, Florida mance antipatterns, and pair programming. EnergyBiz Leadership Forum fbit.ly/c1jWbe February 27–March 1, Washington DC With the theme “driving innovation, sustainability, RSA Conference fenergybizforum.com and performance,” this gathering focuses on February 14–18, San Francisco, California This forum brings together energy industry industrial collaboration across key functional areas frsaconference.com/2011/usa executives, policymakers, regulators, con- such as IT, engineering, operations, and mainte- This annual security conference explores topics sumers, financiers, and the legal community nance. Topics include sustainability, project man- including cryptography, legislation, and govern- to tackle issues that the energy industry faces agement, and asset performance management. ment and policy mandates. Keynotes, breakout over the next five years. Attendees will discuss sessions, and tutorials will cover all facets of changes in technology, regulation, economics, CalConnect XX information security, IT management, program- and politics. February 7–11, Berkeley, California ming, development, and executive management. fcalconnect.org/calconnect20.shtml The Calendaring & Scheduling Consortium will Forrester’s Enterprise Architecture Events locator hold two days of interoperability test events and Forum 2011 mobile calendaring interoperability test events, February 17–18, San Francisco, California Oracle Events

oracle.com/events s followed by two days of technical committee bit.ly/c18NEP e

f g a

Locate User Groups m

sessions, birds-of-a-feather sessions, and a Through keynotes and four tracks of ses- y I

oracle.com/technetwork/community tt

plenary meeting. sions, this forum provides an integrated Ge

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_events.indd 12 11/19/10 9:43:51 AM Resources 13

What’s New at Oracle The latest videos, podcasts, blogs, and more

VIDEOS Oracle Software as a Service Business Practices for a More Accurate Introduction to Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud fbit.ly/bZuLch Forecast with Oracle Crystal Ball fbit.ly/aq4U9f Learn about Oracle’s software-as-a-service offer- fbit.ly/9dXCcs Adam Messinger, vice president of development ings via Oracle On Demand. Accuracy in forecasting at all levels of the organi- at Oracle, introduces Oracle Exalogic Elastic zation results in fewer surprises, more credibility, Cloud—hardware and software engineered to work Canadian Partnership Against Cancer and greater profits. Find out how your organization together for extreme Java performance. fbit.ly/bi4tfT can deliver the most accurate forecast possible, See why Canadian Partnership Against Cancer even when historical data is limited. TechCast Live: Inside the Oracle Cloud chose Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g to deploy its Resource Model API partner portal. Oracle Unified Business Process fbit.ly/bQrBVQ Management Suite 11g: The Unified, Learn how Oracle’s collaboration with standards WEBCASTS Complete, and Social Solution to Tactical bodies enables customers and partners to build Deploy a Highly Available Virtualized and Strategic Business Challenges open and standards-based private clouds. Infrastructure with Oracle VM and Oracle fbit.ly/9UZTnT Real Application Clusters Find out how Oracle Unified Business Process Oracle Fusion Applications: fbit.ly/cOpPgK Management Suite 11g can help your organization The New Standard for Business Learn how to use and deploy Oracle Real fbit.ly/civlr1 Application Clusters in an Oracle VM environment Oracle Direct Customers, analysts, and partners describe how and create a production-ready multinode virtual For Oracle product information, call the number for your region. Oracle Fusion Applications set the new standard environment in a fully automated way. Country Phone Number U.S. and Canada 1.800.367.8674 for how people work, how enterprises innovate, Australia 1800.735.467 and how IT organizations adopt applications. Easy Access to Oracle Applications with Austria 0800.29.7626 Oracle Secure Global Desktop Belgium 0800.73280 Oracle On Demand: bit.ly/bYcXvW Brazil 0800.901.985 f China 800.810.0161 An Interview with Mike Beck Learn about Oracle Secure Global Desktop Denmark 8088.1068 fbit.ly/9DJAcR architecture and how Oracle applications can be Finland 0800.113.573 Mike Beck, senior vice president of Oracle On installed on a small number of server systems and France 0800.905.805 Germany 0800.1.810.111 Demand global operations, discusses how orga- published to thousands of users, providing high Greece 00800.353.12020 nizations can increase the value of IT with Oracle security and simpler administration. Hong Kong 3002.1246 On Demand cloud services. India 1600.44.6725 Indonesia 001.800.1.672.253 Enabling Private Clouds with Oracle VM Ireland 1850.672253 Oracle Goes Prime Time with Oracle Data fbit.ly/aPjeBU Italy 8008.74720 Integration Suite 11g Find out how virtualization is transforming the Japan 0120.155.096 Malaysia 1800.80.1837 bit.ly/b6lYJh datacenter into a service center focused on deliv- f Mexico 01800.221.7321 Miranda Nash, vice president of product ering complete services on demand rather than The Netherlands 0800.0827 management at Oracle, discusses how Oracle piecemeal technology. New Zealand 0508.555.215 data integration products make data continuously Norway 800.14411 Philippines 811.5831 accessible and reliable. Improve Security and Accessibility for Portugal 800.853.021 Healthcare with the Eco-Efficient Sun Ray 3 Singapore 1800.6722.531 Stampa and Partners Achieves High Series Clients South Africa 0800.994.225 South Korea 080.2194.114 Reporting Standards including IFRS with fbit.ly/bwZ9pi Spain 900.952900 Oracle Hyperion Planning See how Oracle’s new Sun Ray 3 Series Clients Sweden 020.798798 fbit.ly/btLiKx can make accessing healthcare applications and Switzerland 0800.55.2574 Taiwan 0800.672.253 Find out how Stampa and Partners solves cus- data more secure, enable easy roaming access Thailand 001800.441.0545 tomer financial reporting challenges with Oracle using a smart card, allow for long refresh cycles, Turkey 00800.353.90014 Hyperion Planning. and reduce power consumption. U.K. 0870.5.332200

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_RESOURCES.indd 13 11/19/10 9:57:40 AM 14 Resources

overHEARD Introducing Exadata Database Machine X2-8 “What became clear from the start . . . was that Oracle’s fbit.ly/cDDH9E claims regarding Exadata’s speed, efficiency, and scalability Hear why Oracle’s Exadata Database Machine were not hype; if anything, they proved modest when com- X2-8 offers an ideal consolidation platform for very large online transaction processing and data pared with actual experience.” warehousing applications. —Carl Olofson, IDC Analyst, in the Messages from Oracle OpenWorld 2010: Exadata Exceeds Expectation and MySQL Thrives white paper (bit.ly/9weZ8w) Oracle’s New SPARC T3 Servers fbit.ly/bTIPqo manage tactical and strategic business change. Worldwide Embedded DBMS 2010–2014 Find out about the scalability, security, and afford- Forecast and 2009 Vendor Shares ability advantages of the SPARC T3 processor Oracle On Demand Cloud Security fbit.ly/cWcfO5 and the four new servers based on it. fbit.ly/95sY1H This IDC report discusses why more independent Gail Coury, vice president of risk management at software vendors and original equipment manu- RESOURCE CENTER Oracle, discusses how Oracle On Demand cloud facturers are choosing Oracle embedded data- Oracle Cloud Computing Center services address security concerns. bases, making Oracle the market leader for a third fbit.ly/bncDK4 consecutive year. Visit this information-packed center to increase MySQL Essentials Webinar Series your knowledge of public and private clouds. fbit.ly/djroSo The Most Complete and Integrated This series covers everything you need to know Virtualization: From Desktop to Datacenter TRAINING to successfully install, develop, deploy, scale, fbit.ly/ctbPAz Siebel 8.1.x Training manage, and secure your MySQL databases and Find out why virtualization at the operating foracle.com/education/siebel applications. system level alone is no longer sufficient. Oracle University offers dozens of training courses covering the architecture, functionality, and data Get a Detailed Look at the New Oracle Data Distributed Caching: Why It Matters for model of Oracle’s Siebel applications; integrating Integrator 11g Predictable Scalability on the Web, and Siebel CRM into an organization’s existing appli- fbit.ly/ccHrWe Where It’s Proving Its Value cations; and installing and configuring Siebel See how Oracle GoldenGate 11g and Oracle fbit.ly/99y1Sx applications. Featured classes include Siebel 8.1.x Data Quality for Data Integrator 11g provide the Read how distributed caching can provide Web- Installation and System Administration, Siebel industry’s most complete, open, and integrated based organizations with almost unlimited scal- 8.1.x Tools, Siebel 8.1.x Business Analyst, and solution for managing enterprise data–centric ability in their data tiers. Siebel 8.1.x Core Consultant Course. architectures. Magic Quadrant for Web Content web locator Oracle Business Intelligence 11g and Management Oracle Essbase fbit.ly/9SKqVG Oracle Blog Center fbit.ly/9Bemaf Find out why Gartner places Oracle in the leaders oracle.com/blogs Find out how Oracle Business Intelligence Suite, quadrant for Web content management. Oracle Consulting oracle.com/consulting Enterprise Edition 11g and Oracle Essbase work Oracle Events and Webcasts together to meet business intelligence challenges. MySQL Replication: Enhancing Scalability oracle.com/events and Availability with MySQL 5.5 Oracle Podcast Center BLOG fbit.ly/9swCgv oracle.com/podcasts SOA Governance@work Learn about the benefits of MySQL Replication. Oracle Newsletters fblogs.oracle.com/governance oracle.com/newsletters Get news from Oracle’s SOA governance team. PODCASTS Oracle University oracle.com/education Enable Seamless Transformation and Oracle on Twitter WHITE PAPERS Effective Adoption of Change with Oracle twitter.com/oracle Messages from Oracle OpenWorld 2010: User Productivity Kit Oracle Support Exadata Exceeds Expectation and fbit.ly/caGQe3 oracle.com/support MySQL Thrives Hear how Oracle User Productivity Kit can help My Oracle Support fbit.ly/9weZ8w project teams capture and deploy best practices myoraclesupport.com International Data Corporation (IDC) analyst Carl to streamline efficiency, reduce cost, and ensure My Oracle Support Communities communities.oracle.com Olofson weighs in on Oracle Exadata and MySQL. successful change adoption.

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

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DEMOS Oracle Unveils Oracle Solaris 11 Express

Accelerating Application Now available, Oracle Solaris 11 Express of Oracle Solaris 11 Express to enable our Deployment with Oracle VM delivers advanced Oracle Solaris features customers to deploy the new advanced fea- See how Oracle VM enables enterprise that have been in development over the tures of Oracle Solaris 11 across a broad set application deployment in minutes or hours, not days or weeks. past five years. Oracle Solaris 11 Express of platforms and our engineered systems: provides availability features that greatly Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Oracle’s Content Management and reduce planned downtime by eliminating Cloud,” says John Fowler, executive vice Sun Tiered Storage Solution traditional patching- and maintenance- president, Oracle Hardware. “Through the Find out how you can manage all your data, related reboots and vastly improving system same engineering disciplines that achieved from application to archive, with maximum boot time. It also adds network virtualization a legendary mission-critical reputation efficiency using Oracle’s complete, open, and integrated enterprise content manage- and resource management to the complete, for Oracle Solaris, we are expecting Oracle ment solutions. built-in virtualization capabilities of Oracle Solaris 11 to further reduce any downtime by foracle.com/demos Solaris, providing high-performance virtual- being quicker and easier to deploy, main- ization with low overhead. tain, and update and to deliver a highly effi- TUTORIALS Oracle Solaris 11 Express also powers cient virtualized operating system to meet Creating a Repository Using the Oracle’s Exadata Database Machine X2-2 the scale and performance requirements Oracle Business Intelligence and Exadata Database Machine X2-8 and of immediate and future virtualization and Administration Tool Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. cloud-based deployments.” This tutorial covers using Oracle “We are excited to announce the release oracle.com/solaris Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition’s Administration Tool to build, modify, enhance, and manage an Oracle business Oracle and Apple Collaborate on Java SE 7 for Mac intelligence repository. Oracle and Apple have announced the available to open source developers so they Calling a Web Service from Oracle OpenJDK project for Mac OS X. Apple will can access and contribute to the effort. Forms 10.1.2 contribute most of the key components, “The availability of Java on Mac OS X plays Learn how to call a Web service from Oracle tools, and technology required for a Java a key role in the cross-platform promise of Forms by using Oracle JDeveloper and Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) 7 the Java platform,” says Hasan Rizvi, senior Oracle Application Development Framework implementation on Mac OS X, including a vice president of development at Oracle. “The to build the interface to the Web service 32-bit and 64-bit HotSpot-based Java virtual Java developer community can rest assured with minimum coding. machine, class libraries, a networking stack, that the leading-edge Java environment will fbit.ly/bXJyha and the foundation for a new graphical client. continue to be available on Mac OS X.” DOWNLOADS OpenJDK will make Apple’s Java technology openjdk.java.net New Downloads Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.0 Released Release 3 Early Adopter Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.0, a server operating system environments, including fbit.ly/9v1kVx Oracle Berkeley DB 11g Release 2 virtualization solution, is now preinstalled both Oracle Solaris 10 and Oracle Solaris fbit.ly/beQN47 on Oracle’s SPARC T-Series servers. Oracle 11 Express, on SPARC T-Series servers. This Oracle Linux JeOS VM Server for SPARC 2.0 (previously called allows rapid consolidation of separate kernel fbit.ly/97aIJl Logical Domains) allows as many as 128 environments with sharing and dynamic Top Downloads virtual servers on one system by taking reallocation of CPU, network, storage, and advantage of the massive thread scale other resources. fbit.ly/cazuFb Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11g offered by SPARC T-Series servers, including “With advanced performance, manage- Oracle Database 11g Release 2 the new SPARC T3 servers, enabling organi- ment, and availability features, Oracle VM zations to benefit from increased flexibility Server for SPARC 2.0 delivers unrivaled Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse 11g and improved server utilization. enterprise-class virtualization capabilities,” Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.0 includes says Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president Oracle GlassFish Server performance, resource management, flex- of Linux and virtualization engineering at Java Platform, Standard Edition ibility, power management, and availability Oracle. “What’s more, it clearly demon- Oracle JDeveloper enhancements. It can support highly sophis- strates that Oracle is committed to con- MySQL ticated enterprise workloads, including tinuing its investment in Oracle Solaris and NetBeans Oracle Real Application Clusters environ- SPARC and offering fully optimized and inte- Oracle Solaris ments. With Oracle VM Server for SPARC, grated solutions to our customers.” organizations can run multiple separate bit.ly/bdH9QD

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_BRIEFS.indd 16 11/19/10 10:11:17 AM BRIEFS 17

StorageTek Virtual Library Extension Available Sun Ray Software 5.1 Released

Oracle has unveiled the StorageTek Virtual provide a single, policy-based management Oracle has delivered Sun Ray Software 5.1, Library Extension, the industry’s first interface that migrates data between high- the latest release of its software for reducing highly scalable second tier of disk performance disk, high-capacity disk, and the maintenance, upgrade, and operational storage that optimizes tape processing in tape tiers. costs and complexity associated with tradi- mainframe environments. The StorageTek The StorageTek Virtual Library Extension tional desktop environments and providing Virtual Library Extension expands the maximizes data protection and availability users access to their virtual desktops from disk capacity of the StorageTek Virtual by leveraging the unique StorageTek nearly any location. Storage Manager virtual tape environment Virtual Storage Manager architecture that Sun Ray Software 5.1 includes enhance- to enable a secondary tier of disk- enables data to be dynamically stored and ments to media, Adobe Flash, audio, USB based performance while maintaining protected in multiple tiers of storage and support, and multidisplay capabilities, streamlined management. This addition at multiple locations without involving the providing organizations with a highly secure provides as much as 3.5 mainframe. The product uses Oracle Solaris and rich virtual desktop experience through PB of additional effective ZFS technology to provide higher reliability Oracle’s Sun Ray Clients, PCs, and laptops. disk storage space, giving with triple-parity RAID-Z3, which delivers Sun Ray Software also provides enhanced customers more-seamless five times more data reliability than IBM support for Microsoft Windows 7, Windows disk buffer scalability systems using RAID-6. XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows to manage growth and “Oracle continues to address the needs Server 2008 R2 operating systems. increase performance of mainframe virtual tape customers,” says The new release takes full advantage of while reducing costs. Robert Amatruda, research director of data the new Sun Ray 3 Series Clients to reduce The integrated protection and recovery at International server workloads and provide a highly secure StorageTek Virtual Data Corporation (IDC). “Oracle’s StorageTek virtual desktop solution, while continuing to Storage Manager/ Virtual Library Extension provides an innova- support a variety of other client devices. StorageTek Virtual Library tive and cost-effective approach by adding a “Oracle continues to enhance its desktop Extension environment second tier of disk to its StorageTek Virtual virtualization portfolio and deliver new and is the only mainframe Storage Manager products.” improved capabilities that provide customers virtual tape solution to bit.ly/dgrPZE a highly secure, low-cost, and easy-to-use remote desktop experience,” says Wim Oracle Cloud Resource Model API Unveiled Coekaerts, senior vice president of Linux and virtualization engineering at Oracle. “The Oracle has released the Oracle Cloud based resources to deliver better business Sun Ray Software 5.1 release delivers on Resource Model Application Programming agility and flexibility, high utilization, and Oracle’s commitment to rapidly advancing Interface (Oracle Cloud API) for managing reduced costs. our desktop virtualization products.” cloud computing infrastructures. Oracle has The Oracle Cloud Elemental Resource bit.ly/cjEX2q also contributed the Oracle Cloud Elemental Model API encompasses the common ele- Resource Model API, a subset of the Oracle ments that make up a cloud by specifying Oracle CRM On Demand 18 Cloud API, to the Distributed Management machines, storage volumes, and networks. Task Force (DMTF) for consideration in The specification submitted to the DMTF Now Available DMTF’s proposed infrastructure-as-a- describes how a machine can be provi- Oracle CRM On Demand 18, the newest service (IaaS) cloud API standard. sioned from an image; how a volume can be release of Oracle’s on-demand customer rela- The Oracle Cloud API follows the repre- attached to a machine; and how a machine tionship management (CRM) product, intro- sentational state transfer (REST) architec- can connect to a network. duces industry-leading capabilities designed ture style and uses HTTP methods to interact “Enterprises are continuing to look to to drive revenue and reduce costs. It delivers with resources to achieve provisioning, asso- cloud computing to extend the value of their qualified leads at lower cost, enables better ciating, modifying, and retiring of entities. As IT investments and better service users,” business planning regardless of market con- a full resource model, the Oracle Cloud API says Sushil Kumar, vice president of product ditions, and includes enterprise-grade cloud also includes composite entities to facilitate strategy and business development at security and network and access control. system deployments and management, Oracle. “With the Oracle Cloud API, Oracle “The latest release [of Oracle CRM On including assemblies, deployment, and scal- is further enabling customers and partners Demand] brings needed integration between ability groups. to build and manage cloud environments— the all-too-often-misaligned roles of mar- By leveraging virtualization, clustering, based on an open, application-aware IaaS keting and sales in the leads management and dynamic provisioning across all layers platform—to improve service levels and the process,” says Mary Wardley, vice president of of the stack, the Oracle Cloud API lets users overall end-user experience.” CRM and enterprise applications at IDC. easily and efficiently manage their cloud- bit.ly/dpY1Na oracle.com/crmondemand

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011

JF11_BRIEFS.indd 17 11/19/10 10:11:57 AM 18 BRIEFS

Oracle Buys Art Technology Group Oracle Buys Passlogix

Oracle has agreed to acquire Art Technology loyalty, organizations across many indus- Oracle has agreed to acquire Passlogix, Group (ATG), a leading provider of e- tries are looking for a unified commerce and a leading provider of enterprise single- commerce software. ATG’s solutions enable CRM [customer relationship management] sign-on solutions. With Passlogix products, enterprises to provide a cohesive online platform to provide a seamless experience organizations can improve and simplify customer experience with sophisticated mer- across all commerce channels,” says Thomas security by enabling single sign-on for a chandising, marketing, content personaliza- Kurian, executive vice president of product broad range of client/server, mainframe, tion, and live-help services. ATG also offers on- development at Oracle. “Bringing together and Web-based applications. demand commerce optimization applications the complementary technologies and prod- “Driven by regulatory mandates, orga- for providing immediate service response. ucts from Oracle and ATG will enable the nizations are being pressured to provide “Driven by the convergence of online delivery of next-generation, unified cross- stronger authentication mechanisms and traditional commerce and the need to channel commerce and CRM.” while reducing the number of passwords increase revenue and improve customer oracle.com/atg required,” says Amit Jasuja, vice president of development, identity management, and Oracle Releases Sun ZFS Storage Appliance Product Line security products at Oracle. “Passlogix and Oracle have had a successful OEM [original Oracle has introduced its next-generation Appliance product line. equipment manufacturer] relationship for Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line. The product line combines a flash hybrid more than three years and have many of These storage appliances boast 50 percent storage pool architecture for file and block the same customers. With the addition of more performance, two times more storage workloads with DTrace Analytics for storage Passlogix, we expect to provide a complete capacity, and nearly three times more pro- and Web-based management, enabling enterprise-scale identity management solu- cessing power than the previous generation organizations to deploy new applications tion and be able to provide more global reach of Oracle storage products. faster and cut administrative costs in half. and support resources to customers.” The new Sun ZFS Storage Appliance oracle.com/passlogix product line ranges from entry-level configurations starting at 12 TB to high-end Oracle Application Testing Suite systems that support more than 1 PB of Three new tightly integrated data protec- storage capacity. 9.2 Delivered tion solutions for Oracle Applications are “Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliances Oracle has released Oracle Application available for the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance have gained strong industry recognition with Testing Suite 9.2, the industry’s most com- product line: Oracle Recovery Manager an innovative architecture that enables cus- plete, open, and integrated application backup optimizes backup with Sun ZFS tomers to cut their enterprise storage costs testing solution for Web, SOA, and packaged Storage Appliances; Oracle Database in half and speed application deployment,” Oracle applications. cloning increases database performance says John Fowler, executive vice president, Oracle Application Testing Suite 9.2 by integrating Sun ZFS Storage Appliances Oracle Hardware. “The next-generation Sun extends support for automated functional with Oracle Data Guard; and Oracle Fusion ZFS Storage Appliance product line delivers testing and load testing for Oracle Database, Middleware simplifies disaster recovery with more than two times the scale of the previous Oracle Application Development Framework, Sun ZFS Storage Appliances. These offerings generation and increases integration with and Adobe Flex–based applications and extend Oracle’s list of more than 70 qualified Oracle’s business-critical applications.” expands integration with Oracle Real User software solutions with the Sun ZFS Storage oracle.com/goto/unified-storage Experience Insight, Oracle Real Application Testing, and Oracle Diagnostics Pack for Oracle Oracle Invests in Mellanox Technologies Database. It also integrates key templates from Capgemini Group’s Test Management Oracle has acquired 10.2 percent of Oracle and Mellanox have had a long- Approach, a business-driven, risk-based ordinary-open-market shares of Mellanox term strategic partnership that allows Oracle approach for structured software testing that Technologies, a supplier of end-to-end to leverage Mellanox’ InfiniBand products to helps organizations manage test processes. connectivity solutions for servers and create differentiated Oracle solutions such “With Oracle Application Testing Suite storage systems. Mellanox’ InfiniBand is as Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic Elastic 9.2, our customers can speed up the applica- the premier switch fabric for enterprise Cloud machines. tion testing process, helping them consis- datacenters and high-performance “InfiniBand is by far the fastest and most tently deploy high-quality applications that computing, providing superior scalability, efficient switch fabric for running enterprise support their critical business processes,” higher throughput, and lower latency datacenters,” says Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. says Richard Sarwal, senior vice president of in comparison to alternative communica- “We are a big supporter of the company.” product development at Oracle. tions technologies. mellanox.com bit.ly/cYcnhK

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF11_BRIEFS.indd 18 11/19/10 10:12:45 AM News by Caroline Kvitka 19

Converged Hardware Management Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 11g simplifies hardware management in Oracle’s Sun environments and reduces costs by as much as 90 percent.

racle has streamlined systems and “We cover complete hardware monitoring automated deployment plans. Ovirtualization management with the for Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic “Patching is a huge headache,” says release of Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Elastic Cloud, giving you detailed hardware Wilson. “Regardless of what platform you’re Center 11g, a solution for managing systems health monitoring and fault detection and using, new patches come out all the time. across traditional, virtualized, and cloud- helping you proactively drive up the avail- Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 11g based datacenter environments. Through a ability on those systems,” says Wilson. simplifies the patching process dramatically. converged hardware management approach, Our advanced analysis engine determines the new release simplifies management Lifecycle Management which patches are needed by which systems tasks for all infrastructure assets. It delivers Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 11g and then helps you safely roll them out infrastructure and lifecycle management, as delivers a range of lifecycle management across hundreds or thousands of servers.” well as integrated support. And while Oracle capabilities, including end-to-end server Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 11g Enterprise Manager Ops Center 11g works as deployment, advanced discovery and inven- also manages the security and compliance a standalone console, when combined with tory, centralized alarm management, inte- side of patching, from deploying security Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g it delivers grated virtualization management, energy patches to proving to an auditor that you are complete applications-to-disk management. performance management, and compliance in compliance with a vendor’s latest recom- “By making hardware and OS manage- management. In terms of deployment, mended patches, Wilson explains. ment more efficient, Oracle Enterprise Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 11g In addition, Oracle Enterprise Manager Manager Ops Center 11g can reduce manage- provides a complete solution for provi- Ops Center 11g integrates virtualization ment overhead by as much as 90 percent,” sioning and patch automation for physical management, with a centralized interface for says Steve Wilson, vice president of systems and virtual servers by providing end-to-end lifecycle management of dynamic domains, management at Oracle. Oracle VM Server for SPARC, and Oracle Solaris Containers. It also manages virtual Infrastructure Management storage and networks. “Oracle Enterprise Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Manager Ops Center 11g provides a rich 11g gives organizations the capability to set of capabilities for creating new virtual maximize the value of their investments in machines, monitoring them throughout Oracle’s Sun systems by managing across their lifecycle, and even doing complex oper- Sun virtual machines, operating systems, ations like migrating them from one physical firmware, servers, clusters, storage, and host to another,” says Wilson. network fabrics. (Management of storage devices, network switches, and clusters Integrated Support is new in this release.) Oracle Enterprise Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Manager Ops Center 11g further simplifies 11g is integrated with My Oracle Support, IT operations by supporting management Oracle’s suite of online support tools, to across heterogeneous operating system provide integrated knowledge management, environments, including Oracle Solaris, service request management, and configura- Oracle Linux, Red Hat Linux, and SUSE tion management. Now Oracle Enterprise Linux. It also manages Oracle’s engineered Manager Ops Center 11g users will be able to

systems, Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic Steve Wilson, Vice President of Systems easily track warranty and support contract

Peter Stember Elastic Cloud. Management at Oracle status on their servers. In addition, these new

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_news.indd 19 11/22/10 11:51:56 AM 20 NEWS

features make it fast and easy for users to Manager 11g to identify and resolve problems Oracle’s hardware and software. “By pro- manage their interactions with Oracle support across the entire stack. A set of integrations viding a single, intuitive management console when they need help or replacement parts. between the two products enables real-time that spans a broad range of infrastructure and “We’ve integrated Oracle Enterprise information on hardware status and alarms software assets, we are enabling customers to Manager Ops Center with My Oracle Support and integrated applications-to-disk compli- streamline operations, improve productivity, so that if Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops ance. These integrations also support an and dramatically reduce management costs,” Center detects a fault in your hardware applications-to-disk management capability Wilson concludes.  systems, it can automatically collect all the to deliver infrastructure awareness for appli- details on the fault and all the debugging cation managers and application awareness Caroline Kvitka is information that Oracle will need to fix the for system administrators. senior managing editor problem and allows you to log a service “The people who manage servers and of Oracle Magazine and request to Oracle so that you can get the help storage will get visibility into what’s hap- Profit. She has been at you need as quickly as possible,” Wilson says. pening in the applications that they’ve never Oracle since 2001. had before,” Wilson says. “And by the same APPLICATIONS-TO-DISK MANAGEMENT token, the people who are administering NEXT STEPS While Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center applications, middleware, and databases 11g functions as a standalone console, it now get visibility into what’s going on down LEARN more about Oracle Enterprise also works in concert with Oracle Enterprise in the virtualization and hardware layers.” Manager Ops Center 11g With the extensive integration work bit.ly/aybggT DOWNLOAD Oracle Enterprise Manager included in Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops WATCH the Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 11g Center 11g, organizations will benefit from Ops Center 11g launch Webcast bit.ly/9jdw7x bit.ly/aO2XSG common management capabilities across

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF11_news.indd 20 11/22/10 11:52:22 AM Interview By Tom Haunert 21

A Kernel of Truth Oracle’s Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Oracle Linux delivers support for new hardware, new features, and better data management.

racle recently announced the networking processing to scale across all that area is improved hardware fault man- OUnbreakable Enterprise Kernel for the CPUs on the system. The Unbreakable agement. We have more tools now to detect Oracle Linux. Tom Haunert, Oracle Magazine Enterprise Kernel includes support that very errors in the hardware and report them back editor in chief, sat down with Chris Mason, effectively spreads the network processing up to the administrator before they actually director of Linux Kernel Engineering at load across all the CPUs on the system. end up impacting the application. We have Oracle, to get the details. The following is an The 2.6.18 Linux kernel is showing its the ability to take memory offline as it goes excerpt from that interview. Download the age in terms of how efficiently it can access bad without taking down the whole system. full podcast at oracle.com/magcasts. The same carries through to individual Oracle Magazine: What is the Unbreakable CPUs and individual components of the Enterprise Kernel for Oracle Linux? CPUs, so that as we start noticing hardware Mason: The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for going bad, the system has the ability to do Oracle Linux is a new kernel for Oracle Linux something about it proactively and take that 5.5. The new kernel is compatible with every- hardware offline. thing existing in Oracle Linux 5.5 now, but it Oracle Magazine: What’s your favorite also adds new features, hardware support, administration feature in the Unbreakable and better performance on top of all that. Enterprise Kernel for Oracle Linux? The Linux kernel interfaces with hardware, Mason: One of my favorite new features is a so it’s key to performance of the system tool we’ve integrated called Latencytop. This because it controls the memory and the I/O was originally developed by Intel, and it allows resources and all the things that the applica- administrators to very quickly find out what tions use to actually talk to the hardware. With the system is currently waiting on. It’s a very the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Oracle easy way to answer the old question of, “Am Linux, we’ve packaged up a more recent, more I bottlenecked on the disk, or am I waiting on mainline Linux kernel, and we’re offering it the network, or am I waiting for CPU?” with the existing Oracle Linux 5.5 stack. Oracle Magazine: What’s involved in running Oracle Magazine: What are some of the key Chris Mason, Director of Linux Kernel Engineering applications on the new Unbreakable at Oracle hardware support features of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Oracle Linux? Enterprise Kernel for Oracle Linux? Mason: Any existing application should work Mason: The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel solid-state storage. We did a benchmark properly on the new Unbreakable Enterprise for Oracle Linux adds support for a broad where the 2.6.18 kernel was only running Kernel. The kernel community dedicates a range of new hardware. We have newer at around 4 GBs per second accessing a great deal of resources to maintain stability, drivers. We have better support for high-end number of high-end solid-state storage and we did a great deal of testing as we were storage subsystems. We’ve spent a lot of drives. When we did the benchmark with the developing the new kernel to make sure that time in the mainline community developing new Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, we got the applications would continue working.  improved support for these things. We have it up to around 9.5 GBs per second. Most of more support for a larger number of CPUs the improvement came from reduced lock Next Steps and more RAM on the system. Basically, the contention and spreading the I/O processing Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel provides a across all the CPUs. LEARN more about Oracle’s Unbreakable complete hardware refresh in terms of what Oracle Magazine: What’s new in the Enterprise Kernel for Oracle Linux the Oracle Linux distribution is able to handle. Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Oracle oracle.com/us/technologies/linux There are a number of changes in the Linux in terms of availability? LISTEN to the podcast

th erine Gi bb ons oracle.com/magcasts

Ca Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel that allow Mason: One of the biggest new features in

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_Interview.indd 21 11/19/10 11:07:15 AM 22 Book Beat

Pro Oracle Database 11g mechanism by which outer joins between Accenture and Infosys Achieve Administration tables can be created virtually. The book Diamond Partner Level By Darl Kuhn highlights real-world business cases where a combined analysis is critical to devel- Apress Oracle has expanded its specialization oping an accurate and meaningful report. apress.com partner program and created the highest These case studies for different types of report unions provide a framework for level in the Oracle PartnerNetwork: Pro Oracle Database 11g tested and proven usage of the set opera- Diamond. The first partners to achieve Administration is a task- tors in developing combined reports. oriented, best-practices Diamond status are Accenture and Infosys approach to database Joe Celko’s SQL for Smarties, Technologies. administration using Oracle Database 11g. It 4th Edition Accenture is a global management con- helps you break down the Oracle Database sulting, technology services, and outsourcing feature set and its documentation set. By Joe Celko Author Darl Kuhn condenses and organizes Morgan Kaufmann company with comprehensive experience the core job of a DBA and gives you a foun- elsevierdirect.com and capabilities across all industries and dation on which to achieve a senior level of business functions. With more than 50,000 expertise. He provides clear explanations Published in 1995, Joe on how to perform critical tasks. He weaves Celko’s SQL for Smarties Oracle professionals, Accenture serves in theory where necessary but doesn’t bog was hailed as the first clients in more than 120 countries. you down in unnecessary detail. Kuhn is not book devoted explicitly Infosys, with 25,000 Oracle consultants to the advanced techniques needed to afraid to take a stand on how things should worldwide, boasts 20 specializations across be done, and he provides readers with clear transform an experienced SQL programmer recommendations for database administra- into an expert. Now in its fourth edition, the Oracle product portfolio. It recently tion tasks. this book remains a classic reference that opened the Infosys-Oracle Solution Center teaches programmers and practitioners at Oracle’s global headquarters, where it Pro Oracle SQL how to become SQL masters. conceptualizes, showcases, and demon- By Karen Morton, Author and SQL expert Joe Celko offers strates solutions that benefit the specific Robyn Sands, Jared Still, the best solutions to old and new challenges Riyaj Shamsudeen, and explains the way you need to think in environments and business requirements Kerry Osborne order to get the most out of SQL program- of the two companies’ joint clients. ming efforts for both correctness and per- Apress formance. The fourth edition features new Oracle Diamond Partners have broad and apress.com examples to reflect the ANSI/ISO standards deep expertise across core Oracle technolo- and includes updates to data element In Pro Oracle SQL, Karen gies, as demonstrated by at least 20 Oracle names to meet new ISO-11179 rules. Celko Morton and her team of OakTable Network specializations. Diamond Partners must also also expands his coverage of solid-state experts take you beyond Oracle SQL syntax drives, parallel processors, and how new have at least five advanced specializations, by showing you how to write successful hardware will change how SQL works. each of which requires at least 50 certified queries and data manipulation that perform implementation specialists. well and deliver correct results. The Practitioner’s Guide to Data The book also helps you master pow- Quality Improvement accenture.com erful aspects of Oracle SQL not found in infosys.com competing databases. You’ll learn analytic By David Loshin functions, the MODEL clause, and advanced Morgan Kaufmann grouping syntax—features that help in elsevierdirect.com InQuira Becomes Oracle CRM On creating good queries for reporting and business intelligence applications. You’ll Many business problems Demand Inner Circle Partner learn when to create indexes, how to verify and flawed information Gold Partner InQuira has joined the Oracle that they make a difference, how to use SQL production processes Profiles to optimize SQL in packaged appli- can be mitigated through CRM On Demand Inner Circle, which show- cations, and much more. data quality management and control. cases partners with proven customer success The Practitioner’s Guide to Data Quality and a solution that is synergistic with Oracle Oracle CRM On Demand Improvement covers the fundamentals for Combined Analyses understanding the impacts of poor data CRM On Demand—in InQuira’s case, its By Michael D. Lairson quality and looks at data quality in terms of InQuira On Demand cloud-based Web self- people, processes, and technology. Oracle Press service and contact center solution. Author David Loshin guides practitioners mhprofessional.com The InQuira solution provides customer and managers alike in socializing and gaining sponsorship for, planning, and establishing service agents with one-click access to Oracle CRM On Demand a data quality program. This book shares answers from across the enterprise. The Combined Analyses templates and processes for business impact provides a detailed, step- combination of Oracle CRM On Demand and analysis, defining data quality metrics, by-step guide to using InQuira On Demand provides an integrated, inspection and monitoring, remediation, and combined analyses to develop reports using data quality tools. multichannel customer service experience within Oracle CRM On Demand. Author that optimizes call center operations, pro- Michael D. Lairson provides a detailed and methodical explanation of how and when Look for other Oracle books at oracle.com/ vides online case deflections, and delivers a to use combined analyses, which provide a technetwork/community/bookstore. differentiated online experience. inquira.com

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF11_partner.indd 22 11/18/10 4:55:46 PM Partner News 23

Simba Technologies Announces MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP Partners Go Platinum

Oracle partner Simba Technologies has features of MDX Provider include visual Four Oracle partners achieved Platinum released MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP 2.0, slicers for improved dimensional filtering Partner status or announced Oracle special- a product that natively and securely con- of complex data sets, and sparklines that izations within their Platinum status: nects Microsoft Excel PivotTable cross-tab enable cell-level formatting with embedded New Platinum Partner Birlasoft has and dashboard functionality with Oracle microcharts. MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP Centers of Excellence in Oracle E-Business OLAP data. 2.0 integrates with Excel Services 2010 and Suite, Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise and MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP 2.0 sup- Excel Services 2007 to store and share work- Siebel Customer Relationship Management ports 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft books on Microsoft SharePoint. It supports (CRM) applications, and Oracle CRM On Excel 2010 and permits drillthroughs within Oracle Database 11g Releases 1 and 2. Demand solutions. The company runs global Excel to the originating Oracle data. Other simba.com delivery centers in China and Mexico and serves clients in banking and financial ser- HCL and Oracle Improve Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Integrity vices, insurance, and manufacturing with industry-specific application development Oracle Platinum Partner HCL Technologies, drug product serial data and e-pedigree and management, quality assurance, and an IT services company, is working with data as pharmaceutical products move managed infrastructure services. Oracle to help pharmaceutical organizations across the supply chain. The partnership Enkitec is one of the first Oracle part- comply with regulatory requirements using will leverage HCL’s multiservice capabilities, ners in North America to achieve Platinum Oracle Pedigree and Serialization Manager including domain consulting, design specialization status within multiple and Oracle E-Business Suite. collaboration and manufacturing, IT ser- categories. Enkitec now holds specializa- This partnership will help customers in vices, business process optimization, tions in Oracle Exadata, Oracle Database HCL’s Life Science, Healthcare, and Chemical and infrastructure. 11g, Oracle Database security, Oracle data Practice to comply with emerging electronic Although it is designed to address the warehousing, Oracle Linux, Oracle Database pedigree (e-pedigree) initiatives and regu- product identification needs of pharma- performance tuning, and Oracle Real latory requirements designed to reduce ceutical companies, Oracle Pedigree and Application Clusters. drug counterfeiting Serialization Manager as provided by HCL Systems integrator Hexaware and product diversion. Technologies can be used in any industry Technologies achieved the Platinum Oracle Pedigree and with high-value products at risk of counter- Partner level in recognition for the more Serialization Manager feiting and piracy, such as medical devices, than 500 projects it has delivered across generates, stores, trans- high technology, and luxury goods. Oracle product lines including Oracle’s mits, and authenticates hcltech.com PeopleSoft Enterprise and Siebel CRM, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Business Pythian Completes Oracle PartnerNetwork Specializations Intelligence Enterprise Edition, and Oracle’s Hyperion performance management appli- The Pythian Group, an Oracle Platinum tions, and demonstrated experience, exper- cations. The company’s core expertise Partner, has achieved four specializations tise, and success with planning, deploying, includes development support, integration, under the Oracle PartnerNetwork Specialized and managing Oracle products in complex, implementation, and testing services. Program: Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Real large-scale environments. New Platinum Partner Mitel, a provider Application Clusters, Oracle Database per- Pythian has been an Oracle partner since of unified communications software solu- formance tuning, and Oracle Linux. Pythian 1999 and has provided services across the tions, was recognized for its expertise and met rigorous business and technical com- entire Oracle technology stack. excellence in delivering integrated voice and petency criteria to achieve these specializa- pythian.com data virtualized desktop solutions. The Mitel Unified IP Client for Sun Ray voice-enables Oracle and Capgemini Group Team Up for Application Testing Oracle’s Sun Ray clients, providing access to telephony and desktop applications via a Oracle and Platinum Partner Capgemini The Oracle Software Testing Center of Java card. Mitel Communications Director, Group have expanded their testing rela- Excellence will use the Capgemini Group’s the company’s core call-control software, tionship by creating a new global initiative structured testing methodology, called Test runs on Oracle Sun Fire x86 clustered called the Oracle Software Testing Center of Management Approach (TMap), together systems and StorageTek tape and library Excellence. Established within the Capgemini with Oracle’s application quality manage- storage solutions. Group in India and its local professional ser- ment solutions, including Oracle Application birlasoft.com vices subsidiary, Sogeti, the center will help Testing Suite, Oracle Real Application enkitec.com O EN I N G customers deliver higher-quality applications Testing, and Oracle Data Masking Pack. hexaware.com Y G R

LI N D in less time and at lower cost. capgemini.com/testing mitel.com

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_partner.indd 23 11/18/10 4:56:33 PM 24 Partner News

Oracle Validates Partner Integrations Oracle and IBM Collaborate

Seven Oracle partners have achieved vali- centralized application management, and Through OpenJDK dated integrations between their products utilizes the Oracle applications’ sign-on. Oracle and IBM will collaborate to support and Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1. AppDirector version 2.11 is an intelligent OpenJDK, the leading open source Java devel- Oracle partner @hand’s Field Mobility application delivery controller from Oracle opment environment, to help developers and System (FMS) version 5.4.3 product connects partner Radware. AppDirector optimizes organizations build and innovate based on mobile workflows, such as work order man- server utilization and improves application existing Java investments and the OpenJDK agement and asset tracking, with the equiva- performance for Oracle E-Business Suite reference implementation. lent functions in Oracle E-Business Suite. transactions. It offloads resource-intensive Both companies will support the recently @hand FMS is standards-based, supports processing, provides advanced health moni- announced OpenJDK development roadmap, disconnected mobile data capture and toring, eliminates network disruptions, and which accelerates the availability of Java complex mobile transaction processing, manages enterprise traffic. It also enables Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) across the and can run on a variety of handheld, tablet, fine-tuning of network behavior based open source community. The OpenJDK com- laptop, and smartphone platforms. on granular, application-specific packet munity will be the primary location for open ShipConsole 5, from Platinum Partner classification. source Java SE development, and the Java Apps Associates, integrates Oracle Gold Partner Solix Technologies’ Solix Community Process will continue to be the E-Business Suite with parcel and freight car- Enterprise Data Management Suite 4.5.1 primary standards body for Java specifications. riers such as UPS and FedEx. ShipConsole (Solix EDMS) automates enterprise data- ibm.com/java facilitates online shipping, label printing, base archiving, application migration, ship confirmation, and real-time shipment and application upgrades, and is used to Partners Develop Solutions for tracking through Oracle Shipping Execution. relocate historical transactional business It transmits shipping information from objects from a production database to an Oracle Fusion Applications Oracle E-Business Suite active archive. Solix EDMS provides data Two partners are working with Oracle on to carriers and saves referential integrity and secure archiving and Oracle Fusion Applications–based solutions. tracking information and eliminates the need to synchronize proce- Cognizant, an Oracle Platinum Partner, is freight costs retrieved dures when patches are applied. Solix EDMS now an Oracle Fusion Applications codevel- from carriers. It enables archiving also improves application perfor- opment partner for customer relationship shipping of complete, mance, makes backup faster, and improves management (CRM). Cognizant and Oracle partial, and back-order disaster recovery. Solix EDMS is integrated will codevelop CRM software tools to enable items and allows users to enter and validate with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 modules seamless, secure, and rapid integration and item serial numbers at the time of shipping. including general ledger, accounts receiv- migration of customer data from Oracle’s InFlight, from Platinum Partner Business able, accounts payable, purchasing, order Siebel CRM to Oracle Fusion CRM applica- & Technology Resource Group (BTRG), management, and inventory. tions. Cognizant is also assisting in Oracle enables integration between Oracle’s Sabrix Application Suite, from the Tax Fusion CRM application testing and pro- PeopleSoft Enterprise applications and and Accounting business of Gold Partner viding its teams worldwide with training in Microsoft SharePoint 2007. InFlight, a Thomson Reuters, employs standard Oracle Oracle Fusion Applications and technology. proprietary SharePoint Web Part combined integration techniques to add tax determina- Oracle Platinum Partner Wipro with a custom HTTP handler, requires no tion and calculation to the order-to-cash and Technologies and Oracle have launched customization of the PeopleSoft applica- procure-to-pay business processes in Oracle a joint development initiative for next- tion. With InFlight, users can view and edit E-Business Suite. Sabrix eliminates the need generation Oracle Fusion Applications. PeopleSoft information within a SharePoint for sales and accounting personnel to make Wipro’s investments around Oracle Fusion portal as defined by their PeopleSoft access tax decisions and eliminates manual jurisdic- Applications include embedded product privileges; the content can adopt the look tion code or tax code assignments during development and strategy initiatives and in- and feel of the SharePoint portal or retain its transaction processing. It has robust, vendor- depth, structured product training in func- native PeopleSoft interface. charged tax and accrual functionality and tional business applications and technical GL Wand 4.1, from Oracle partner eliminates the need to store and maintain tax foundation architecture. Codevelopment Excel4apps, provides Microsoft Excel–based rates within Oracle applications. with Oracle allows Wipro to engage and reporting and budget-loading software for hand.com deliver Oracle Fusion Applications in stand- use with Oracle applications. GL Wand allows appsassociates.com alone situations, upgrades, or coexistence Excel-based report creation and queries btrgroup.com with existing applications investments against Oracle data, enabling accountants excel4apps.com/oracle such as Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle’s and other users with minimal Oracle training radware.com PeopleSoft, and Oracle’s CRM applications. O EN I N G to do data analysis and ad hoc reporting. solix.com cognizant.com Y G R

GL Wand requires no data replication, has thomsonreuters.com wipro.com LI N D

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_partner.indd 24 11/18/10 4:57:09 PM Community Bulletin by Justin Kestelyn 25

Java Evolves At JavaOne, Oracle details a roadmap for JDK 7, JDK 8, and beyond.

onferences have many worthwhile plan was formally anointed by Thomas events. It was fascinating to see the Java Cpurposes. For attendees, they offer the Kurian, executive vice president of product leaders and Oracle ACEs, who have a opportunity for immersion in content that development at Oracle, in his JavaOne surprising amount in common, begin to get ideally leads to better job performance, keynote address as the plan of record for to know each other—and we look forward to as well as the chance to meet peers and the JDK. With that issue settled, Oracle seeing more of the same at future meetings. colleagues with similar interests. For the also announced that Java Specification conference organizer, the ability to interact Requests (JSRs) for JDK 7 and JDK 8 would be A Clear Road Ahead with end users face-to-face and to focus forthcoming in the Java Community Process; A stable, realistic roadmap is required for employees around a particular set of goals the status of these JSRs had also been a broad adoption of any technology. While Java and messages can be very useful. matter for speculation. may have lacked such a roadmap in recent The JavaOne 2010 conference delivered With the details of Plan B laid out, book years, times have changed. With community all those things. And for Oracle Technology authors can plan their next projects with leaders on board, hopefully we’ll see that Network, it served another crucial purpose: publishers, speakers can update their adoption not only continue at historic levels to galvanize the Java community around the presentations for accuracy, trainers can plan but even expand. common goal of the progressive evolution of for education needs—and overall, people can Here are my recommendations for getting the Java platform and ecosystem. refer to a concrete plan for Java’s future. That more information on Java-related topics: is more than what could be said three years, • Re-Thinking JDK 7, by Mark Reinhold: Plan B: The Path Forward for Java two years, or even one year ago. blogs.sun.com/mr/entry/rethinking_jdk7 The most important Java-related news to • Plan B: The Details, by Mark Reinhold: emerge from JavaOne was Oracle’s unveiling Java Champions, Activate! blogs.sun.com/mr/entry/plan_b_details of the proposed schedule and contents of Even when you’re armed with the right • Highlights from Thomas Kurian’s JavaOne Oracle’s commercial Java Development Kit information, it’s still very important to keynote: bit.ly/cNT9Qi 7 (JDK 7)—and by extension, JDK 8. Getting know the “right” people to help make • The Java Champions Project: this schedule clarified and on track had been this information widely known. In the java-champions.dev.java.net  a major goal across the Java community. case of Java, those people are the Java As Mark Reinhold, chief architect in the Champions—a self-governed group of Justin Kestelyn Java Platform Group at Oracle, explained independent Java technology evangelists (justin.kestelyn@oracle in a September 2010 (pre-JavaOne) blog who preach the Java gospel around the .com) is senior director, post, “It’s been clear for some time that the globe—and the leaders of Java User Groups Oracle Technology most recent JDK 7 development schedule (JUGs) worldwide. Network and developer [the one originally proposed by Sun] is, to For the first time, Oracle Technology programs, as well as put it mildly, unrealistic.” Instead, Reinhold Network was able to help host those groups Oracle Technology Network editor in chief. proposed a choice between a “Plan A” and at JavaOne, superseding many months of “Plan B,” with Plan A being to adhere to the virtual interaction with irreplaceable face Web Locator Sun vision of JDK 7 and thus a 2012 release time. Working with Oracle’s Java evangelist and Plan B being “to take everything we have team, the Oracle Technology Network team Oracle Technology Network Home Page oracle.com/technetwork now, test and stabilize it, and ship that as helped bring those groups into the loop Java Home Page JDK 7 [in 2011].” Reinhold also wrote that and get their feedback about the above oracle.com/technetwork/java his team could then finish other features in developments (and many other things, Database Admins and Developers Home Page a JDK 8 release that could ship “fairly soon including the JavaOne conference itself). oracle.com/technetwork/dbadev thereafter,” presumably in 2012. Java Champions and JUG leaders joined System Admins and Developers Home Page After gathering feedback on these options scores of Oracle ACEs, who made their oracle.com/technetwork/systems from the community—where there was annual pilgrimages to Oracle OpenWorld at Architect Home Page oracle.com/technetwork/architect a very clear preference for Plan B—that various Oracle Technology Network–hosted

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oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_communitybulletin.indd 25 11/19/10 11:18:30 AM Subscribe

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10040384_2Dbarcode_SUBSCR_ad.indd 1 5/20/10 9:42:50 AM Architect By Bob Rhubart 27

Enterprise Architecture in Interesting Times Business and technology continue to shape enterprise architecture.

ay you live in interesting times,” says had a significant impact. “Enterprise managing, deploying, and administering Mthe old curse. Enterprise architects architecture has emerged in the last 10 software and hardware subsystems.” who have plied their trade over the last 10 years as a real, respected, and matured area Bhuller sees new tools in the future for years know too well just how interesting of interest and expertise,” says Oracle ACE enterprise architects. “The emergence of the first decade of the twenty-first century Director Ronald van Luttikhuizen. “People lightweight introspective and design tools has been. Enterprise architects are in the take it more seriously.” will help the enterprise architect reverse- business of adaptation, and the rapid But according to Mans Bhuller, senior engineer current state architectures and evolution of information technology and director with Oracle’s Enterprise Solutions formulate future state architectures.” the level to which that technology has Group, that would not have happened Dikmans predicts a technology- permeated the human experience have without the emergence and maturity of driven cultural shift, what she calls the kept enterprise architects very busy trying architecture standards and specifications. “emancipation of consumers.” to hit a moving target that shows no signs “Without these standards, there would “People will become coproducers rather of standing still. What factors had the be no agreed-upon methods to specify, than just being consumers of products greatest impact on enterprise architecture document, and communicate architectural and services,” says Dikmans. “A company’s in the last decade? I put that question to a patterns among the enterprise architecture strategy will no longer be determined number of people who spent the decade in community,” Bhuller says. “Now we have just by the management but also by its the architecture trenches. common tools and taxonomy to talk among customers and employees.” “I clearly see the evolution of Web ourselves and to our customers.” One thing is certain: the enterprise services and subsequently SOA as Talk itself—in the form of social architecture target isn’t about to stop having the biggest impact on enterprise computing—was another factor that helped moving. It’s going to be another interesting architecture,” says Oracle ACE Director Ron to shape enterprise architecture. “The decade.  Batra, director of product development at rise of social networking and the focus on AT&T. “Web services and SOA have enabled collaboration have been very important,” a high level of interoperability, accelerating says Oracle ACE Director Mike van Alst, an Bob Rhubart time to market and reducing complexity independent architect. “They will play an ([email protected]) and software development costs.” important role in the next decade as well.” is manager of the Oracle ACE Director Lonneke Dikmans, Other factors will continue to shape architect community an enterprise architect at Approach enterprise architecture over the next on Oracle Technology Alliance, offers a different angle on SOA’s 10 years. Network, the host of the impact on enterprise architecture. “We’ll see more of the big shift already Oracle Technology Network Arch2Arch podcast “The whole world is now your underway,” says Oracle ACE Director series, and the author of the ArchBeat blog competitor,” Dikmans says. “This means Floyd Teter. “Moving away from federated (blogs.oracle.com/archbeat). you must be more cost effective and hardware joined by ad hoc network designs flexible. This has led to SOA as a concept. and moving to centralized datacenters— Next Steps But to achieve a SOA, you need some form both local and cloud configurations—that of enterprise architecture or planning leverage virtualization to meet the varied GET more architect information across the enterprise. That realization needs of a multitude of users.” oracle.com/technetwork/architect started with large international companies Batra also sees a major role for READ more about enterprise architecture but has been picked up by smaller cloud computing. “Besides shrinking oracle.com/technetwork/architect/entarch organizations as well.” geographical boundaries,” he says, “cloud LISTEN to ArchBeat podcasts feeds2.feedburner.com/OtnArch2Arch That trend—the growing recognition of computing will usher in an entirely new bit.ly/9X6j2T the value of enterprise architecture—has level of sophistication for procuring,

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oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_ARCHITECT.indd 27 11/19/10 11:40:33 AM 28 Up Close By Jeff Erickson

French Connection Common business practices and language bring far-flung Oracle users to AUFO.

ou need a few basics to fashion a his team are implementing a common Ysuccessful user group, says Jean-Jacques instance of Oracle E-Business Suite at sites Camps of the Association of French-Speaking around the world using four languages: Oracle Users (l’Association des Utilisateurs Chinese, English, French, and Japanese. “I Francophones d’Oracle, also known as AUFO). used to think that Belgian fiscal laws were “You need common business practices, you the world’s most complicated, but I am need to be close enough to attend meetings, discovering that they are child’s play next to and you need a common language,” says India’s,” he says. Camps, a longtime AUFO president. So it makes perfect sense, he continues, for his Clever Projects Paris, France–based user group to draw Camps likes the creativity that technical contacts from Switzerland and Algeria. and cultural challenges provoke. So AUFO “In northern Africa, we share common designed a contest to allow its members to language and practices with much of the show off their projects. Called the Oracle business community, and it’s just a couple Trophées, the contest is open to any Oracle of hours away by plane,” says Camps. AUFO technology or application but requires the has established active contacts in Algeria technology to have been in production for and is currently working with Moroccan Jean-Jacques Camps, President, Association of more than three months. A jury made up of French-Speaking Oracle Users (l’Association des and Tunisian businesses to activate new Utilisateurs Francophones d’Oracle) an industry journalist (if available), two uni- members there. versity professors, three Oracle employees, your ideas, the clever things you have done three AUFO members, and the previous A Valuable Resource that you can show and use for networking.” year’s winner judges the Oracle Trophées. French-speaking Oracle users have many During his career, Camps has worked on “We bring people from the outside to give good reasons to join AUFO. The group hosts projects that have pushed him to reach out us a neutral view of the competitors,” a range of special interest groups, runs to fellow AUFO members for help. His first says Camps. The competition is extremely contests to help users show off their Oracle- Oracle E-Business Suite implementation, popular and draws submissions from based projects, and provides as many as in 1996, encompassed 30 manufacturing many French-speaking nations. “Helping 30 miniconferences, called commissions, plants in four countries using two lan- members shine is an important function of throughout the year. Each commission guages. In 2003 Camps was elected to the our user group,” he says.  is formed around a single theme such as AUFO board of directors. Later that year, he database monitoring, paperless invoices, or missed a board meeting and was elected managing support services. AUFO invites an president in his absence. Jeff Erickson expert from Oracle or a consulting company “That was seven years ago, and I am (jeffrey.x.erickson@ to provide a lecture; the lecture is followed still going,” says Camps, who adds that his oracle.com) is a senior by testimonials from group members, which leadership position helps him meet people editor with Oracle are then followed by an open debate. The and learn things he would not otherwise Publishing. member testimonials are key. “No testi- be exposed to. “Nothing beats firsthand mony, no commission,” says Camps. “I don’t knowledge from a fellow member,” he Next Steps want these to be marketing events; they are says. “I like to be in this user group world to be an exchange of practices and lessons.” because real life is much more painful and LEARN more about AUFO The commissions seem to be a natural much more clever than marketing mate- aufo.fr extension of Camps’ user group philosophy. rials. You learn more.” Camps’ current WATCH the Up Close interview with

Jean-Jacques Camps tratton “It’s about real life,” he says. “It’s about what project for his employer makes the perfect S oracle.com/oramag/upclose

works for you or doesn’t work, your failures, case for user group involvement. He and N ora

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_UpClose_R1.indd 28 12/2/10 3:33:41 PM Peer-To-Peer by Blair Campbell 29

Hack, Tweet, Repeat Three peers on the tools and techniques that are making their lives easier.

Chet Justice Oded Raz Simon Haslam

Company: BI Wizards, a business intelligence Company: Brillix, a database consulting Company: Veriton, a specialist consultancy in and application development consultancy company Oracle middleware and end-to-end application Job title/description: Consultant, responsible Job title/description: CEO and founder, performance tuning primarily for metadata development responsible for business development and Job title/description: Principal consultant and Location: Tampa, Florida research and serving as lead consultant on founder, responsible for designing architectures Oracle Database and Oracle security projects and troubleshooting as necessary Length of time using Oracle products: More than 8 years Location: Tel Aviv, Israel Location: Sherborne, Dorset, England Length of time using Oracle products: 8 years Length of time using Oracle products: 16 years

How did you get started in IT? I was working What are your favorite processes or as a data entry clerk for a university that sent techniques on the job? Troubleshooting—the What’s your favorite tool or technique on the out thank-you notes to donors, and when ability to understand a problem and isolate job? Even now with multitiered systems, most I noticed the same names and addresses its origin. I’m also interested in hacking performance problems tend to be a result of coming through over and over, I created a techniques—investigating and finding holes how an application is using—or abusing—the Microsoft Access database to store much in application and database implementations database. The Active Session History feature of the information. I then hooked that using techniques such as SQL injection, introduced in Oracle Database 10g helps database up with Microsoft Word templates cross-site scripting, and impersonation. identify rogue statements and track down to make my job even easier. Pretty soon I was Which new features in Oracle Database are where the application is going wrong. managing our five department databases, you currently finding most valuable? One Which new features in Oracle Fusion and I began taking programming classes at feature I find highly valuable is Oracle Middleware are you finding most valuable? A the local community college. Database Vault. Until now, strong users recent discovery has been Oracle JRockit’s new What advice do you have about how to get such as DBAs and those with a SELECT ANY Flight Recorder tool. It’s a circular diagnostics into application development? Download TABLE role had no limitations to seeing buffer, which in the event of a serious JVM software and start playing with it. This is one all the data inside the database. Oracle [Java Virtual Machine] problem allows you to of my absolute favorite things about Oracle: Database Vault introduced a new security replay recent method calls and help diagnose the ability to download enterprise-class admin feature that can prevent other what went wrong. software and use it on your own machine. users—even those in a DBA role—from If you were going to the International Space How are you using social media in your work seeing sensitive data and manipulating it Station for six months and could only take today? Thanks to Twitter and my blog, I’ve or its base objects. Now organizations can one Oracle reference book, what would it been able to have technical conversations safely protect sensitive data from strong be? As a bit of an Oracle polymath, I’d want to with some industry heavyweights: Cary users without compromising their ability to cover all bases. So I’d take e-books, including Millsap, Christian Berg, Alex Gorbachev, perform their jobs. Professional Oracle WebLogic Server [Wrox, Eddie Awad, Chen Shapira, Jake Kuramoto, How are you using cloud computing in your 2009], Oracle JRockit: The Definitive Guide Matt Topper, Lewis Cunningham, John Scott, work today? We’re using Google apps for our [Packt Publishing, 2010], Oracle Fusion Dimitri Gielis . . . I could go on and on. I central mail and calendar system, and we’re Developer Guide [McGraw-Hill Osborne encourage other Oracle people to add these using cloud-based applications for customer Media, 2009], and Pro Oracle Database 11g tools to their repertoire. relationship management and time sheets. RAC on Linux [Apress, 2010]. 

Learn more about the Oracle ACE program at oracle.com/technetwork/community/oracle-ace.

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_peer_R1.indd 29 12/2/10 3:01:59 PM open for business MySQL community wins with better innovation, support, and integration. by David A. Kelly

Sometimes, relatively small things can make a big impact. Take the case of the MySQL database. First released in 1995 and purchased by Sun in 2008, MySQL has quickly graduated from the realm of hobbyists to the world of business, becoming the leading open source database for many Web applications and an integral part of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) Web application stack. Almost a year after Oracle’s acquisition of Sun, MySQL plays an even bigger role in enterprises of all sizes worldwide. “I think that MySQL, and all the experimenting that people are doing with it, helps to advance database technology in general,” says Carl Olofson, research vice president of database management and data integration software research at International Data Corporation (IDC). “It’s a type of ‘rising tide that lifts all boats’ phenomenon in which even people in the commercial database world can benefit from products like MySQL that get adopted, adjusted, and extended to work effectively in different problem spaces.” Olofson goes on to explain that MySQL has become a popular solution across a variety of applications and services with varying business requirements. “A lot of people using MySQL to create Web applications and online services choose to use MySQL because it enables them to scale up their environment in a fairly low-cost way,” says Olofson. “We’re also seeing a lot of companies using

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_MySQL_R1.inddd.indd 30 12/2/10 5:05:59 PM open for business I-hua I-hua Chen

oracle magazine January/February 2011

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“From a performance perspective, MySQL is great. We’re actually running MySQL on standard commodity servers, so we have plenty of room to grow.” —Jeff Freund, CEO and Founding CTO, Clickability

Jeff Freund, CEO and founding chief technology officer of Clickability, speaks highly of Oracle’s commitment to MySQL. “There are places where Oracle Database is the right solution, and there are places where MySQL is the right solution, and the fact that Oracle is acknowledging that is a real sign of maturity,” he says.

MySQL for reporting databases, databases out, adding that in addition to its open source for departmental servers, and databases for snapshot heritage, MySQL complements Oracle’s business-critical systems.” Clickability traditional enterprise database solutions by When it comes to databases and database clickability.com targeting scenarios ranging from Web 2.0 and applications, Olofson doesn’t necessarily Location: San Francisco, California hosting service providers to read-intensive Industry: Technology think that there’s a one-size-fits-all solution. applications and departmental projects. Revenue: US$20 million In fact, he often sees organizations using Employees: 50 a combination of database solutions, such Oracle products: MySQL Enterprise Edition, Enterprise-class MySQL as MySQL and Oracle Database. “You’ll MySQL Enterprise Monitor, MySQL Enterprise One person who is winning with the frequently see MySQL being used in Backup, MySQL Query Analyzer combination of Oracle and MySQL is Jeff specialized roles, such as for Web presence, Freund, CEO and founding chief technology while a company’s back-office systems might be driven by Oracle officer of San Francisco, California–based Clickability, a leader in Database,” says Olofson. on-demand, cloud-based Web content management. Clickability’s It’s a synergy that’s not lost on Tomas Ulin, vice president of solution enables companies to deploy sophisticated, dynamic MySQL development at Oracle. “We see the combination of Oracle Websites and Web content without investing directly in hardware or and MySQL as a win-win, not only for commercial customers but for IT infrastructure. Freund was one of thousands of MySQL users who the entire MySQL community,” says Ulin. attended the MySQL Sunday event at Oracle OpenWorld 2010.

The dedication to MySQL is a strong example of Oracle’s drive to “One of the good things about the MySQL Sunday event at Oracle A dler

deliver both a complete stack and integrated solutions, Ulin points OpenWorld 2010 was seeing how many Oracle users were showing B ob

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

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MySQL 5.5: Enhanced Performance, Availability, and Usability

A key ingredient to the success of throughput performance out of our existing hard- and scalability on all supported platforms and MySQL has been the involvement ware infrastructure,” says Jeff Freund, CEO and modern architectures. In addition, InnoDB is founding chief technology officer of Clickability, now the default storage engine and has been of the open source process and the a San Francisco, California–based company that optimized to fully leverage the computing power MySQL community. Oracle continues provides on-demand, cloud-based Web content of today’s multithreaded operating systems and to provide both a source and a binary management. “That’s a big deal for us from both a multi-CPU/multicore systems. release of the MySQL database via the manageability and financial perspective.” Improved availability. New semisynchronous MySQL Community Server, which also The addition of MySQL to the Oracle family is replication capabilities improve failover reliability paying off for both MySQL and Oracle Database and data integrity. includes the InnoDB storage engine. users in a number of ways. “We’ve aligned the Improved usability. A range of enhanced diag- It is still licensed under the GPL, the MySQL database and the InnoDB storage engine nostics, administrative changes, and enhanced most widely adopted open source development efforts to improve performance partitioning features mean developers and license, so that anyone can continue and deliver enhancements earlier and more administrators can do more with less effort. often on those two technologies,” says Rob “Right off the bat, users will notice that to use the current versions of MySQL Young, technical product manager for the MySQL MySQL 5.5 is simply faster on their multicore for free, including MySQL 5.5. database at Oracle. “We can also now provide systems, regardless of the operating system,” MySQL users and Oracle customers with a says Young. “For example, our read/write bench- MySQL 5.5 provides new enhancements to per- unified support experience. The MySQL database marks for MySQL 5.5 on Microsoft Windows formance and scalability, availability, and usability is now part of a much larger organization that is running on a 4-CPU dual-core server show an across all supported operating systems and committed to investing in its future.” eye-popping 1,500 percent sustained perfor- architectures. “The initial benchmarks for MySQL According to Young, MySQL 5.5 delivers a mance gain over the same test run for MySQL 5.5 demonstrating increased throughput and range of new benefits, including 5.1. It’s pretty amazing. It’s a real testimony to performance, along with the addition of MySQL Improved performance and scalability. MySQL the investment and commitment that Oracle is 5.5’s InnoDB plug-in, enable us to get more 5.5 features significantly improved performance bringing to the product.”

interest in MySQL,” says Freund. “The inclusion of MySQL Sunday as and online documentation. Those really add up to a rapid ramp-up for part of OpenWorld speaks highly of Oracle’s commitment to MySQL people to gain experience and expertise in managing MySQL.” in terms of promoting it across their entire customer base. There But given Clickability’s business model, bottom-line performance are places where Oracle Database is the right solution, and there are and scalability are perhaps even more important than management places where MySQL is the right solution, and the fact that Oracle is of the technology. “From a performance perspective, MySQL is great. acknowledging that is a real sign of maturity.” We’re actually running MySQL on standard commodity servers, so Since its founding in 1999, Clickability has grown from a startup we have plenty of room to grow when we need to,” says Freund. “It company with one customer to an organization that’s currently also means that our overall infrastructure management overhead is serving hundreds of Websites managed by thousands of users on a lower, because it fits in with the standard hardware profile, rather daily basis. “Since we host our customers’ public-facing Websites, than requiring specialized database servers.” we’re a mission-critical component,” says Freund. “That’s why we’re always very focused on reliability, availability, performance, MySQL on Windows and everything else that goes hand in hand with running a mission- While companies such as Clickability deploy MySQL databases on critical infrastructure service for enterprise customers.” LAMP platforms, those aren’t the only options. MySQL is available Clickability has built its solution on a technology stack based for many other platforms, from HP-UX to Oracle Solaris and on Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Java. It has more than 40 MySQL Microsoft Windows. That’s one of the reasons the Bank of Finland database servers performing multiple functions, from reporting and chose MySQL as the basis for a versatile Microsoft Windows–based data aggregation to core transactional processing, deployed in two payment and settlement simulator application it developed for use datacenters. Both datacenters are fully redundant, and Clickability by central bankers and economic experts. uses MySQL to do real-time data replication between them. “We’ve been very satisfied with our experience using MySQL “We moved from a commercial [non-Oracle] enterprise database on Windows,” says Matti Hellqvist, an economist on the Bank to MySQL in 2003, and it was a great move for us,” says Freund. of Finland’s Simulator Development Team. Hellqvist notes “MySQL requires lower overhead to manage and a lower cost for team that flexibility and ease of use were particularly important and support resources, and it just fit much better with our scaling criteria, because the bank wanted to encourage broad adoption architecture and need to run a SaaS [software-as-a-service] platform.” by economic experts. “MySQL integrated seamlessly into our In addition, Freund doesn’t have any dedicated DBAs on his environment and supported our software development effort well,” operations team. Instead, he’s found that senior-level operations Hellqvist adds. “It has also been efficient to use and compatible engineers are able, with MySQL certification, to deploy and manage with both 32- and 64-bit OS environments.” MySQL instances effectively. The simulator application helps experts analyze liquidity needs, “With MySQL it’s easy to find the right skill sets and even risk issues, settlement algorithms, changes in behavioral patterns, experienced people,” he says. “There are great community resources and other issues critical to the central bankers and economic experts

oracle magazine January/February 2011

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Matti Hellqvist, an economist with the Bank of Finland, explains that the bank chose MySQL to power a Microsoft Windows–based payment and settlement simulator it developed for central bankers and economic experts. “We’ve been very satisfied with our experience using MySQL on Windows,” he says.

at the Bank of Finland. community has grown up around it, and the “We selected MySQL in 2003 based snapshots community meets annually for a seminar in on its good track record as an efficient Bank of Finland Helsinki. The application was also selected SQL database that had low cost and was bof.fi as the foundation of the Trans-European usable for both Windows- and Linux-based Location: Helsinki, Finland Automated Real-time Gross settlement Industry: Financial applications,” says Hellqvist. “The simulator Express Transfer system (TARGET2) Employees: 500 works on large numerical data sets, and it Oracle product: MySQL simulator, which allows Eurosystem needs capability to handle parallel sets of central bankers to do quantitative analysis data as well as large data streams. The data Gorilla Nation Media, an Evolve Media and simulations of European large-value is efficiently organized and handled with Company payment systems. gorillanation.com MySQL. MySQL represents a very reliable For Hellqvist, the foundation of MySQL Location: Headquartered in Los Angeles, and strong foundation for a computational California, with offices worldwide is paying additional benefits beyond simply analysis application like ours and has been a Industry: Online media marketing effectively managing his application’s key to the application’s success.” Employees: More than 350 data. “The relatively low cost of the tool

In fact, the simulator has been so Oracle products: MySQL was important to us, as well as the wide I mages successful that it has been used by more support of data analysis tools that can than 50 central banks worldwide, plus other financial and research connect to MySQL,” says Hellqvist. “Our analysis and research institutions for risk analysis, as well as development and research application showcases the versatility, scalability, and efficiency of

related to payment and settlement systems. An active user the database.” Juliana Harkki/getty

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

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“One of the great beauties of MySQL is that it’s backed by an amazing company like Oracle, which has deep pockets and basically wrote the book on databases.” —Veronika Burnett, Manager of Database Engineering, Gorilla Nation Media

MySQL for Business Intelligence MySQL is particularly powerful when it comes to Web applications, but companies are putting the open source database to plenty of other uses as well. Take, for example, the Los Angeles, California–based global online ad sales firm Gorilla Nation Media. “Gorilla Nation relies on MySQL to power its advertising network business intelligence platform,” says Alex Godelman, chief technology officer for Gorilla Nation. “As a fast-growing company, we need strong technology so we can operate quickly and efficiently. MySQL is truly in a league of its own.” Gorilla Nation, part of Evolve Media, provides integrated media and promotional programs to Fortune 500 brand advertisers, including clients such as Fox Television, Best Buy, and more. Its customers demand advanced business intelligence (BI) and targeting methods to reach the perfect online audience for their advertising or brand campaigns. Reaching more than 66 million unique visitors per month—as Gorilla Nation does—requires Websites and an IT infrastructure that can scale effectively and efficiently. That’s why Gorilla Nation chose MySQL as the foundation of its BI platform. The organization has more than 500 servers running MySQL, 20 of which are replicated. Its sites get approximately a quarter-billion page views per month, and MySQL manages more than 1 TB of data for Gorilla Nation while providing near-real-time traffic and advertising campaign performance information to Gorilla Nation’s publishers and advertisers. In addition, Gorilla Nation uses MySQL to capture all the clickstream data and transactions required for back-office accounting and billing functions. “One of the great beauties of MySQL is that it’s backed by an amazing company like Oracle, which has deep pockets and basically wrote the book on databases,” says Veronika Burnett, manager of database engineering at tall Gorilla Nation. “Also, unlike other open source Veronika Burnett and Alex Godelman of Gorilla Nation Media rely on MySQL to serve 66 million unique databases, MySQL is highly scalable. That visitors monthly. “As a fast-growing company, we need strong technology so we can operate quickly and

s Phil Salton allows us to do things in our business that are efficiently. MySQL is truly in a league of its own,” says Godelman.

CONNECT: oracle.com/mysql facebook.com/mysql twitter.com/mysql linkd.in/MySQLPros

oracle magazine January/February 2011

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absolutely critical, such as having the same database running on deploy MySQL for a wide range of departmental, transactional, and multiple physical servers in multiple geographic regions and having BI–oriented needs as well. near-real-time replication.” “MySQL is a popular product, and I think its importance is Burnett says Gorilla Nation also benefits from MySQL’s increasing because we’re starting to see all the different ways management features. “MySQL’s enterprise manager tool allows it’s being used,” says IDC’s Olofson. “It’s also an avenue through us to track performance on hundreds of MySQL servers from a which database technologists can experiment, try out things, single console, which allows one database engineer to be extremely and distribute them easily because MySQL is so readily available efficient and effective,” she says. and widespread.”  Like other fast-growing companies, Gorilla Nation has to balance the trade-offs between creating an enterprise-class infrastructure to support customer needs reliably and efficiently with the need to David A. Kelly ([email protected]) is a business, technology, scale up quickly, dynamically, and in a cost-effective manner. At the and travel writer who lives in West Newton, Massachusetts. same time, Gorilla Nation needs to keep its eye on the bottom line NEXT STEPS and avoid large up-front licensing investments. That’s why MySQL has turned out to be such a good choice for Gorilla Nation, according LEARN more about MySQL to Godelman. oracle.com/mysql “All our technical and business requirements were satisfied and READ Oracle’s MySQL Blog exceeded by MySQL,” says Godelman. blogs.oracle.com/mysql WATCH the MySQL Sunday keynote from Oracle OpenWorld 2010 A BRIGHT FUTURE bit.ly/MySQLSunEd While MySQL continues to power a great many Websites and DOWNLOAD MySQL dev.mysql.com/downloads applications, it’s likely that more and more organizations will

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF11_MySQL.indd 36 11/23/10 5:57:28 PM

Positive Identification How SUNY and ING increase compliance and decrease risk with Oracle Identity Management 11g

BY DAVID BAUM

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF11_IDManagement_R1.indd 38 12/2/10 3:38:26 PM 39

Positive Identification IT SECURITY IS NOT SO MUCH ABOUT CREATING STRONGER WALLS AS IT IS ABOUT CREATING BETTER-FUNCTIONING doors and windows. And when deploying identity management solutions, those better doors and windows equate to more-complete provisioning operations, more-comprehensive ways to manage identity, and greater flexibility for authorizing people to access enterprise information assets. These are a few of the reasons why the State University of New York (SUNY) and global financial institution ING deployed Oracle Identity Management 11g—which consists of a variety of solutions, ranging from single sign-on and access control to directory services, toolkits, and more. SUNY and ING use these solutions to manage user identities, provision IT resources, and enable trusted online business partnerships

I-HUA I-HUA CHEN while simplifying access procedures for end users and improving governance and compliance activities for auditors.

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011

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Federated Identity Management SUNY is the largest comprehensive system of public higher education in the United States, with 64 geographically dispersed campuses, more than 88,000 faculty and staff members, and 465,000 students. Since 1980, SUNY has relied on distributed identity management and user authentication processes at each institution. When the State of New York asked SUNY to also define each of SUNY’s 88,000 employees in the state’s own user directory, SUNY worked with Oracle to devise a federated identity management solution that would leverage SUNY’s existing security architecture, user IDs, and passwords for each staff member to permit access to New York State’s services. Identity Dave Powalyk, chief technology officer (CTO) in the SUNY Office of Information and Technology (OIT), says Management the goal was to permit campus employees to access both SUNY and state resources with their existing security Glossary credentials by connecting SUNY’s identity management system to the state’s identity management system. SUNY succeeded by using Oracle Identity Federation 11g, a complete solution for securely exchanging identity Attestation Compliance mandates information between two independent entities. This flexible, multiprotocol federation server works with existing often require periodic identity and access management systems, reducing the need to manage multiple accounts for each user. attestation—or confirmation/ “Oracle Identity Federation 11g gave us an out-of-the-box solution for interacting with the New York authentication—of users’ access to critical applications. State Office for Technology as both an identity provider and a service provider via SAML [Security Assertion Attestation requires that a Markup Language] 2,” says Powalyk. “This was a first-ever federation between a New York State government defined approval workflow entity and the university, and it clearly demonstrated the power of the Oracle approach. In addition to Oracle periodically reauthorizes access to sensitive information Identity Federation 11g, we are evaluating Oracle Access Manager 11g and Oracle Identity Manager 11g for (typically financial data) upcoming projects.” that falls within a particular SAML is an XML-based standard for exchanging authentication and authorization information among compliance mandate such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). security domains. Oracle supports both SAML and Shibboleth, a popular federation standard in the higher education arena. Adherence to these standards ensures that SUNY can securely share identities with other federated identity campus systems without having to manage, maintain, and administer additional identities and credentials. The technologies and standards “With Oracle Identity Federation 11g, Oracle has created an effective and efficient way of deploying a that provide portability of identity information across federation model,” continues Powalyk. “This release reflects some of the specific features we requested from security domains to enable Oracle. Oracle took the time to understand exactly what we needed, and it developed this software with its users of one domain to securely customers’ needs in mind. This is just another great example of a true partnership between Oracle and SUNY.” access data or systems of another domain seamlessly, and SUNY extended the default Oracle Identity Federation 11g behaviors by using the supplied third-party without the need for completely extension classes to leverage SUNY’s existing Java entitlements, access services, and LDAP directories. redundant user administration. Paul Lienhard, a programmer/analyst at SUNY and the lead Java architect for this project, says the process Resource Access Control took only eight weeks from start to finish. “We have 64 campuses with their own LDAP directories, and we Facility (RACF) needed to access all of them,” he explains. “Now users log in to the familiar identity management portal, An IBM security system that pro- and Oracle Identity Federation 11g brokers the exchange with the outside SAML service provider.” vides access control and auditing functionality for the z/OS and “Oracle Identity Federation 11g enabled us to take advantage of our existing infrastructure and wrap it z/VM operating systems. within an SAML identity provider,” adds Ken Runyon, the program manager for identity management at SUNY OIT. “Tens of thousands of campus employees can access resources from the State, even though the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) campus and the State use two completely different federation technologies. Oracle’s standards-based, An XML-based standard for SAML 2.x approach enabled us to easily establish secure communications and pass all requested and exchanging authentication and required attributes between these two independent entities.” authorization data between security domains—for example, SUNY now provides federated access to New York State’s online training classes to faculty and staff at between an identity provider every SUNY campus in a seamless and integrated manner. Other online resources will be available from the (a producer of assertions) and State in the future. “The best part of the whole process is that we provided these services quickly and in a a service provider (a consumer of assertions). manner that was best suited for our community,” Runyon says.

Adhering to Standards Integration with Oracle Identity Federation 11g enables the SUNY community to seamlessly access federated services provided by other higher education institutions as well. According to Lienhard, as long as it is a SAML 2–compliant identity management solution, Oracle Identity Federation 11g can work with that solution in a straightforward fashion without any modifications to the SAML federation and communication architecture. “Support for several industry federation standards in Oracle Identity Federation 11g enables SUNY to continue its support of its custom ‘federation-like’ infrastructure as well as other federation technologies, such as Shibboleth, within its existing federated identity infrastructure,” he says. “We were able to link the 64 campuses that currently use our custom solution relatively easily, using the software Oracle provided, right out of the box.”

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

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The State University of New York Office of Information and Technology’s Paul Lienhard (left), Dave Powalyk, and Ken Runyon have deployed Oracle Identity Federation 11g to allow more than 88,000 faculty and staff members to securely access New York State’s services.

SUNY worked closely with Oracle to develop the identity management solution. “The Oracle Identity Federation 11g production team was very helpful and supportive,” says Runyon. “They provided a specific snapshot implementation that we could leverage, including a robust API for integrating our custom Java security layer, The State University of which includes a fine-grained entitlement system and access management solution.” New York According to Amit Jasuja, vice president of development, identity management, and security products suny.edu at Oracle, SUNY is confronting a common problem that leads many organizations to federated identity Headquarters: Albany, New York management solutions. “As organizations request business services from partners outside of their firewalls, or Industry: Higher education attempt to offer a cohesive set of information resources to dispersed user communities, a federated identity Number of users: 553,000 management solution simplifies the information landscape for users and streamlines administration for students and faculty IT professionals,” he explains. “They might be outsourcing payroll and benefits functions, or perhaps they Oracle products and are making their business applications available to nonemployees. In addition, some companies need to services: Oracle Identity Management 11g solutions, aggregate services from multiple sources and present them to consumers as a single cohesive offering.” including Oracle Identity In all these scenarios, Oracle Identity Management 11g provides single-sign-on access to applications Federation, Oracle Access and services across disparate security domains—without forcing IT pros to add large numbers of users to an Manager, and Oracle Identity enterprise directory or requiring people to manage multiple identities online. Manager; Oracle Consulting g es

I ma “Ideally there should be an established trust mechanism that allows people who have been authenticated in one domain to be trusted in a second domain,” adds Jasuja. “Yet without an effective federation strategy, organizations confront delays adopting applications, they must contend with runaway costs for onboarding and management, and they lack a cohesive strategy for addressing new security

Ken Gabrielsen/Getty Ken Gabrielsen/Getty threats. SUNY is solving these issues with Oracle software.”

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_IDManagement.indd 41 11/23/10 11:23:50 AM 42

Investing in Security and Compliance With Oracle Identity Management 11g, Oracle has devised the industry’s first service-oriented security architecture, simplifying application security by making identity functions available as discrete, reusable Web services. According to Jasuja, this unique approach enables developers to create a centralized security infrastructure for multiple applications, resulting in faster development cycles, greater deployment flexibility, and lower integration costs. “Oracle uses the term service-oriented security to refer to externalization—for example, handling the administration, authentication, authorization, and auditing outside of applications by providing well-defined external identity management services and a standardized, centralized infrastructure to deliver these services, which might sound pretty simple at first glance,” explains analyst Martin Kuppinger, cofounder of Kuppinger Cole, a leading Europe-based analyst company for identity-focused information security. “However,” Kuppinger continues, “it involves changing how security is implemented in applications. The advantages are obvious: standardized, consistent security; quicker implementation of security; reduction of security holes; faster time to market for secure applications; easier testing of applications; and so on.” It’s partly as a result of this flexibility that identity management software is gaining momentum in the financial services industry, where increasingly stringent regulatory compliance issues are driving many companies to bolster their user provisioning and access management processes. ING, a global financial institution that offers banking, investments, life insurance, and retirement services, is staying ahead of the regulatory curve with an identity management solution based on Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Identity Analytics. “The increased cost of managing our heterogeneous environment, coupled with security concerns and reliance on manual processes, has generated the need for a centralized identity management solution,” says Mark Robison, enterprise architect at ING U.S. Financial Services (USFS). “Our goal is to automate the current ID request and approval processes and the access change and termination processes for ING employees, as well as to simplify our entitlement attestation processes to meet various regulatory compliance requirements.” ING USFS has a vast array of systems and applications accessed by approximately 10,000 employees. Previously these people relied on cumbersome manual processes for identity management, access request, and attestation activities, frustrating users and negatively affecting productivity. When ING employees requested identity services, such as permission to use a new set of applications, it took as long as 10 days to complete the request, mainly because the organization’s identity management processes were not capable of reconciling user identities across applications and did not offer effective controls for regulatory compliance. snapshot “Our business community was frustrated by a confusing set of procedures,” admits Robison. “Every manager ING was responsible for reviewing each entitlement. Not only was it time consuming, but it was not effective.” ing.us ING currently has 96 IT professionals supporting provisioning, deprovisioning, compliance checking, Headquarters: Amsterdam, approvals, and attestation. “The provisioning alone entails about 20,000 transactions per month,” adds the Netherlands Brian Cox, a security manager in ING’s access management organization. “Now we are leveraging the Oracle Industry: Financial services Number of internal users: Identity Management suite to automate a lot of the manual approvals.” 10,000 Oracle products and Earning High Yields on User Provisioning services: Oracle Identity ING deployed Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Identity Analytics after evaluating other identity Management 11g solutions, management solutions from CA Technologies and IBM. Robison says ING chose the Oracle Identity including Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Identity Management suite because Oracle had a well-integrated toolset that is easy to use with both Oracle and Analytics; PeopleSoft Human non-Oracle applications. Resources; PeopleSoft “Our plan was to automate the provisioning of users, including adds, changes, and revokes, with access Financials; Hyperion appli- approvals facilitated via automated workflow processes,” says Robison. “We especially like Oracle’s open cations; Oracle Database; and extensible architecture. Oracle Identity Management 11g includes a lot of out-of-the-box connectors, Oracle Consulting Partner services: Deloitte, along with a connector factory where you can build your own.” Tata Consultancy, Infosys ING worked with consultants from Deloitte to devise 16 use cases for integrating the new software with third-party access management solutions from Passlogix (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle), along with Oracle’s PeopleSoft applications and custom ING applications. “Our first deliverable was to replace a manual perimeter revoke process with automatic perimeter revokes from Oracle Identity Manager, which was quick and easy to complete,” says Robison. “Now when someone is terminated in our HR system, we instantly terminate them from all the perimeter systems to keep them from accessing our Microsoft Exchange Server, Active Directory, and several layers of RACF [Resource Access

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_IDManagement.indd 42 11/23/10 11:24:34 AM 43

“Oracle has the best integrated suite of identity management tools in the industry, and it is just getting better.” —Mark Robison, Enterprise Architect, ING

Mark Robison, enterprise architect at ING, says his company is improving business efficiency and reducing costs with Oracle Identity Management 11g. “Oracle is really moving us forward with our risk and ID management strategy.”

Control Facility] security on our mainframe systems. We have improved business efficiency by automating Next Steps ID request processes, approval processes, access change processes, and termination processes.” Next the team implemented Oracle Identity Analytics for handling quarterly attestation processes in LEARN more about Oracle more than 500 information systems. Attestation is a quarterly review process in which managers verify that Identity Management 11g oracle.com/identity their employees can only access certain information systems. WATCH the Oracle Identity “Oracle Identity Analytics works hand in hand with Oracle Identity Manager to define the roles and Management Webcast handle the attestation,” says Cox. “It feeds that information to Oracle Identity Manager, which is the bit.ly/oidmag provisioning engine, setting up accounts and access-control requirements for each information system.” READ the Oracle Identity Cox believes the Oracle software could cut the manual efforts expended by ING’s 96-person access Management 11g data sheet bit.ly/OIDMDS management organization by 75 percent. “We can’t fully get away from some manual processes, but the Download Oracle Oracle software will help us reduce the effort significantly,” Cox says. “It will also help us increase productivity Identity Management for the business community, since people won’t have to wait to have their access requests fulfilled. More bit.ly/ODIDW importantly, when somebody is terminated from ING, we can instantly revoke their access privileges and keep them out of the system. The potential payback in terms of risk avoidance is huge.” As ING deploys the solution into wide production, it is improving business efficiency and reducing costs by systematically automating manual access processes—including granting users access based on their ever-changing roles and responsibilities within the organization. “Oracle has the best integrated suite of identity management tools in the industry, and it is just getting better,” says Robison. “Oracle is really moving us forward with our risk and ID management strategy. They have delivered a good product with a good process right out of the box.”  A dler

B ill David Baum ([email protected]) is a freelance business writer based in Santa Barbara, California.

CONNECT: oracle.com/identity facebook.com/oracleidm twitter.com/oracleidm linkd.in/oracleidm

oracle magazine January/February 2011

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By Rich Schwerin

Customers and partners excel at driving business value and innovation with Oracle technology{ .

Oracle’s customers and partners continue Celebrating to demonstrate innovation, excellence, and leadership across Excellence scores of applications and technologies worldwide. In 2010, Oracle honored these customers and partners with the Oracle Excellence Awards, covering categories ranging from sustainability and application deployment to cutting-edge Java development, implementation expertise, and beyond. The Oracle Excellence Awards include the Duke’s Choice Awards, for companies making innovative use of Java technology; the Enable the Eco-Enterprise Awards, for customers and their partners who are using Oracle products to reduce their environmental footprint while reducing costs; the Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards, for customers creatively using Oracle Fusion Middleware to offer unique business value; the Oracle Magazine Editors’ Choice Awards (see the November/December 2010 issue); the Oracle North America Titan Awards, for partners that help deliver outstanding Oracle technology solutions; and the Oracle PartnerNetwork Specialized Global Awards, for global partner excellence in several categories, including technology, applications, industry, and midsize.

Duke’s Choice Awards • Innovative End-to-End Consumer Software The Duke’s Choice Awards celebrate extreme Application: MLB Advanced Media • Innovative Java for Education: Rolling innovation in the world of Java technology • Innovative Government and Public Works: Thunder and are granted to companies with the most- Perrone Robotics • Innovative Technical Data Visualization: innovative projects using the Java platform. • Innovative Healthcare and Human Gephi The 2010 award categories and winners are Services: Pulse • Innovative User Experience: Effective UI • Innovative Automotive/Transportation: • Innovative Java Building Block: Cinterion • Innovative Visualization and Data Case Systems • Innovative Java for Developers: Wabi Sabi Intelligence: Visual Mining

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_awards.indd 45 11/19/10 1:40:56 PM 46 Netcentric Systems won the Oracle North America Titan Award for Sun SPARC Server. From left to right: Netcentric’s Robert Pope and Michelle Agul with Oracle Senior Vice President of Sales Ted Bereswill.

The U.S. Senate won an Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Award for Enterprise 2.0. From left to right: U.S. Senate’s Senior Software Specialist Andy Le and Senior IT Specialist James Pierce; Oracle Vice President of Product Management Amit Zavery; and Business Intelligence Application Solutions’ Hasan Zaidi.

Oracle President Safra Catz (center) with Oracle PartnerNetwork Specialized Global Award winners. From left to right: Tom Colleary, Arrow Electronics; Robert Forman, TriCore Solutions; Deborah Arnold, DAZ Systems; Michelle Agul, Netcentric Systems; Nidal Haddad, Deloitte Consulting; Geoffrey O’Connell, Accenture; Juhani Hintikka, Nokia Siemens Networks; Noriyuki Toyoki, Fujitsu; and Joerg Sinning, SIV AG.

Enable the Eco-Enterprise Awards Partners LLC) Services), Credit Suisse, Northern Trust, The third annual Enable the Eco-Enterprise • Interpark OpenLink, Rakuten, UBank backed by Awards honor Oracle customers and their • Intertek National Australia Bank (partner: Oracle partners for their environmental leadership. • MercadoLibre Financial Services), Verizon Winners hail from a wide range of industries • Northern Arizona University (partner: • Data Integration and Availability: Avea that are using Oracle products to support their Oracle Hardware Sales Consulting) (partner: Intellica), Herbalife green business practices and sustainability • Sandia National Labs (partner: National • Enterprise 2.0: Balfour Beatty, Education initiatives to reduce their environmental Renewable Energy Laboratory) Management Corporation, ING Bank Turkey impact, cut costs, and improve business • University of Massachusetts (partner: (partner: MSU), SunGard (partner: Keste), efficiencies. Winners were selected by a panel Fujitsu) Texas A&M University System (partner: of six judges, including four Oracle green • Verizon Wireless Red Samurai Consulting), the U.S. Senate experts; Adam Werbach, chief sustainability (partner: Business Intelligence Application officer at Saatchi & Saatchi; and Kathleen Oracle Fusion Middleware Solutions) Schwille, director of program development Innovation Awards • Identity Management: NetApp, for National Geographic Education. The 2010 The Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Schneider National (partner: award winners (and their respective partners, Awards honor customers for their cutting-edge PricewaterhouseCoopers), the State hiverts hiverts if applicable) are solutions using Oracle Fusion Middleware University of New York, Telenor (partner: S

• obert Agência Nacional de Águas (partner: products. Winners were selected based on Skyworth TTG) R UNIMIX Tecnologia) the uniqueness of their business case, the • Oracle Fusion Middleware for Applications: • Alcatel-Lucent project ROI and level of impact relative to Avon (partner: Ranzal, an Edgewater • Cisco the size of the organization, the complexity Company), Crocs (partner: Wipro), • Costco Wholesale (partner: ImageSource) and magnitude of implementation, and the Motorola (partner: Business Intelligence • Essex County Council (partner: Oracle On originality of architecture. The 2010 award Consulting Group), Premium Wine Brands Demand) categories and winners (and their respective Pernod Ricard (partner: Rubicon Red), • Farmers Insurance (partner: Capgemini) partners, if applicable) are University of Adelaide (partner: Groundhog • Fitness First (partner: Knowledge Global) • Application Grid: Amgen, Ascent Media, Software), University of Virginia (partners:

• Iberdola Renewables (partner: Project Avocent, CalWIN (partner: HP Enterprise EMS Consulting and Intelligent Chaos) lewis, by saul hartmann studios, photography

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_awards_R2.indd 46 12/8/10 9:33:05 AM 47

Duke’s Choice Award winners, from left to right: Armin Dimai, Cinterion; James Skinner, Case Systems; Mathieu Bastian, Gephi; Osama Oransa, Pulse; Michael Ahern and William Dean, MLB Advanced Media; and Tony Anecito, Rolling Thunder.

Winners of the Enable the Eco-Enterprise Award with Oracle Chairman of the Board Jeff Henley (center).

• SOA/BPM/Governance: Amylin (partner: • Technology Momentum: Innowave • Public Sector: Accenture the Carrera Agency), FN Herstal (partner: Technology • Services: CSS International eProseed), Freddie Mac, Ingersoll Rand, Solution Categories and Award Recipients OnStar (partner: Wipro), Queensland • Accelerate: IBM Global Business Services Oracle PartnerNetwork Courts Services, Department of Justice, • BI and Data Warehousing: Accenture Specialized Global Awards and Attorney General (partners: Intelligent • CRM: InQuira The Oracle PartnerNetwork Specialized Pathways and Leonardo Consulting), • Database, Grid, and Oracle Real Application Global Awards recognizes partner excellence Sempra Utilities (partners: Southern Clusters: TriCore Solutions in a number of categories, including California Gas Company and SDGE) • Enterprise 2.0: Keste technology, applications, industry, and • Financial Management: eVerge Group midsize. The 2010 award categories and Oracle North America Titan Awards • Human Capital Management: Wipro winners are In its seventh year, the Oracle North America • Integration and SOA: CedarCrestone • Applications Partner of the Year: Deloitte Titan Awards recognize partner solutions and • Oracle Red Stack: Deloitte Consulting Consulting best practices developed or delivered in fiscal • Security and Identity Management: • Database Partner of the Year: TriCore year 2010. Honorees demonstrate excellence PricewaterhouseCoopers Solutions in categories including sales, marketing, and • Sun SPARC Server: Netcentric Systems • Embedded Partner of the Year: Nokia solution development and are selected by a • Supply Chain Management: Infosys Siemens Networks panel of 76 judges that includes IDC analysts; Technologies • Independent Software Vendor of the Year: Everything Channel journalists; and Oracle Industry-Specific Solution Categories and SIV AG sales, marketing, and development executives. Award Recipients • Industry Partner of the Year: Fujitsu The 2010 award categories and winners are • Consumer: Deloitte Consulting • Middleware Partner of the Year: Momentum Categories and • Energy: Rolta TUSC Accenture Award Recipients • Financial Services: eVerge Group • Midsize Partner of the Year: DAZ Systems • Global SI Apps Momentum: Deloitte • Healthcare and Education: IBM Global • Server and Storage Partner of the Year: Consulting Business Services Netcentric Systems • Regional SI/Reseller Apps Momentum: • Manufacturing and Distribution: Deloitte • Value-Added Distributor of the Year: Arrow DAZ Systems Consulting Electronics 

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_awards.indd 47 11/19/10 1:43:31 PM Oracle development PL/SQL Developer by Allround Automations. everywhere...

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JAVA EE 6 Simplicity by Design Leverage new Java EE 6 features to build simple and maintainable applications.

he introduction of Java Platform, Injection (CDI) with Java Persistence API (Plain Old Java Object) beans and uses a TEnterprise Edition (Java EE) 5, in 2006, (JPA) 2.0 and the Bean Validation model to type-safe mechanism for dependency injec- did a lot to simplify enterprise application implement transactions. tion. CDI also introduces many powerful development. Java EE 6, released in 2009, With a pragmatic mix of available Java EE features such as events, interceptors, deco- simplifies design and architecture tasks 6 APIs, you can entirely eliminate the need rators, standardized extension points, and even further. Java EE 6 is a good choice to implement infrastructure services such as the service provider interface. for building small situational applications transactions, threading, throttling, or moni- Because CDI is new and designed to be quickly and without any overhead. This toring in your application. The real challenge an integration layer, there is some overlap article discusses various Java EE 6 archi- is in selecting the right subset of APIs that with older technologies. Although you can tectures and design approaches that help minimizes overhead and complexity while continue to use EJB 3.1 injection or JSF developers build efficient, simple, and making sure you don’t have to reinvent the managed beans directly, you should con- maintainable apps. wheel with custom code. As a general rule, sider using CDI wherever possible. CDI is Java EE 6 consists of a set of independent you should strive to use existing Java SE more powerful, and you can simplify your APIs released together under the Java EE and Java EE services before expanding your application by using a single API. name. Although these APIs are independent, search to find alternatives. CDI uses annotations to perform depen- they fit together surprisingly well. For a given dency injection. The most important anno- application, you could use only JavaServer CDI: THE STANDARD GLUE tation is javax.inject.Inject. The example Faces (JSF) 2.0, you could use Enterprise CDI, introduced with Java EE 6 to act as a in Listing 1 shows how this annotation can JavaBeans (EJB) 3.1 for transactional services, glue for the different parts of the Java EE 6 be used to inject a POJO into a servlet. All or you could use Contexts and Dependency specification, manages the lifecycle of POJO you need to do is to declare a field and annotate it with @Inject. When that code is Code Listing 1: POJO injection into a servlet with @Inject executed, the container automatically ini- tializes fields annotated with the @Inject @WebServlet(name="HelloWorldService", urlPatterns={"/HelloWorldService"}) annotation before the execution of any public class HelloWorldHTTPService extends HttpServlet { business methods. There are no specific requirements for the @Inject private Hello hello; injected class, beyond having to contain a default constructor: @Override protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException { public class Hello { PrintWriter out = response.getWriter(); public String helloWorld(){ out.println(hello.helloWorld()); return "Hello World"; out.flush(); out.close(); } } } }

To make the above example work, you Code Listing 2: index.xhtml: binding the values to a CDI backing bean would also need an empty beans.xml deployment descriptor with the following content: . The existence of this configuration file in the WEB-INF Content:
folder activates CDI capabilities. Note that the Hello class is a POJO and not an EJB. It doesn’t have to be declared

I-HUA CHEN I-HUA or configured—the @Inject annotation

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011

JF11_java.indd 51 11/19/10 2:30:41 PM 52 Java EE 6

ensures proper creation and lifecycle man- The @Asynchronous annotation in ECB: A Pragmatic Separation agement. In the real world, you would rarely Listing 5 is particularly interesting. It of Concerns inject POJOs into a servlet; you would prob- enables the asynchronous but transactional If you review the packaging of the application ably use a UI framework (such as JSF 2) or execution of methods and is available only described above, you will notice separate expose your service via representational for EJBs. Note that the Messaging EJB is boundary, control, and entity packages. This state transfer (REST). In such cases, the use injected with @Inject and not @EJB. In packaging approach is an implementation of of CDI is even more beneficial. practice, either annotation would work, with the Entity Control Boundary (ECB) pattern. To illustrate, consider a simple virtually no difference. The use of @Inject is The boundary layer is the facade, the control MessageMe application that stores a slightly more powerful and supports inheri- layer is responsible for the implementation of message string in a database. The JSF 2 tance. The @EJB annotation, on the other process- and entity-independent logic, and markup consists of two components: hand, works only with EJBs. the entity layer contains rich domain objects. inputText and commandButton. As shown The MessageStore class in Listing 6 is a With Java EE 6 and especially the avail- in Listing 2, inputText is value-bound to a Data Access Object (DAO) that encapsulates ability of JPA 2, CDI, and EJB, the implemen- class with the name index with a property access to the EntityManager. tation of all three layers can lead to empty message, which has, in turn, a content attribute. commandButtons’s action attribute Code Listing 3: A CDI backing bean with injected EJB is bound to the save method of the backing bean with the name index. package com.abien.messageme.presentation; Listing 3 shows the backing bean imple- import com.abien.messageme.business.messaging.boundary.Messaging; import com.abien.messageme.business.messaging.entity.Message; mented as a request-scoped CDI bean, import javax.enterprise.context.RequestScoped; using the @RequestScoped annotation for import javax.inject.Inject; request handling. A JSF 2 managed bean import javax.inject.Named; @Named (using the @ManagedBean annotation) @RequestScoped could also work, but CDI is just as powerful. public class Index { And using CDI everywhere simplifies the @Inject Messaging ms; architecture, with a single glue API across private Message message = new Message(); all application layers. public Message getMessage() { The annotation @Named (as specified return message; } in the JSR 330 specification and imple- public void save(){ mented in Guice and Spring) makes the ms.store(message); index backing bean visible in all expression } } language (EL) markup. It works according to the “convention over configuration” prin- ciple: the name of the backing bean in JSF Code Listing 4: JPA 2 entity validated with Bean Validation 2 is derived from the class name. The first letter is not capitalized. package com.abien.messageme.business.messaging.entity; The Message class is implemented as a @Entity public class Message { JPA 2 entity, as shown in Listing 4. @Id The next class in this example is the @GeneratedValue Messaging class, which is implemented private Long id; @Size(min=2,max=140) as an EJB 3.1 session bean. This class rep- private String content; resents a pragmatic exception to the “CDI everywhere” rule. EJBs provide many capa- public Message(String content) { this.content = content; bilities, such as transactions, pooling, Java } Management Extensions (JMX) monitoring, public Message() { /*required by JPA */} and asynchronous execution—all for the public String getContent() { return content; price of a single additional @Stateless } annotation. In future Java EE releases, public void setContent(String content) { these aspects are likely to be extracted from this.content = content; } EJBs and made available in CDI as well. In public Long getId() { Java EE 6, however, a boundary or facade of return id; a business component is most effectively } } implemented as a stateless session bean.

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_java.indd 52 11/19/10 2:32:06 PM Java EE 6 53

delegate code. For example, many CRUD- boundary layer refactoring. The reusable and pendent of presentation logic. Even with the based use cases can be implemented very noncohesive parts of the boundary layer, many compromises you may make in your efficiently with a single boundary acting as a such as queries, algorithms, or validations, architecture, a clear separation between facade for accessing multiple entities. along with cross-cutting concerns from the business and UI technology is a must. However, a direct one-to-one relationship the entity layer, will be extracted into CDI In practice, UI logic tends to vary more fre- between the concepts in the ECB pattern and managed beans in the control layer. quently than business logic. It is common to packages inside a component can still be produce business logic that can be accessed beneficial. When packages are kept separate, Using the CEC Pattern by a Web client (such as JSF 2), a rich client static analysis tools can be used more easily The main purpose of the boundary in the (such as Swing or Eclipse RCP), and REST at to measure dependencies between pack- ECB pattern is to provide a clear separation the same time. ages. Furthermore, frameworks such as OSGi between business and presentation logic. By In the case of JSF 2, CDI is again the and Jigsaw rely on the existence of separate definition, the boundary needs to be inde- easiest choice for implementing a controller packages to expose public APIs. In Java EE 6, the boundary is always real- Code Listing 5: A boundary implemented as an EJB session bean ized with EJBs. The control layer can contain either CDIs or EJBs, and the entity layer can package com.abien.messageme.business.messaging.boundary; contain either JPA 2 entities or transient, import com.abien.messageme.business.messaging.control.MessageStore; unmanaged entities. The final decision of import com.abien.messageme.business.messaging.entity.Message; whether to use a CDI or an EJB in the control import javax.ejb.Asynchronous; import javax.ejb.Stateless; layer does not have to be made up front. You import javax.inject.Inject; can start with a CDI and convert it into an @Stateless EJB down the road by using the @Stateless public class Messaging { @Inject annotation. You may need to use an EJB in MessageStore messageStore; some cases, such as when you need to start a @Asynchronous subsequent transaction with @RequiresNew, public void store(Message message){ messageStore.store(message); when you need to execute a method } asynchronously, or when you need to roll } back the current transaction by invoking SessionContext.setRollbackOnly(). Code Listing 6: A CDI bean from the control layer CDI, on the other hand, is more suitable for integrating legacy code or implementing package com.abien.messageme.business.messaging.control; Strategy, Factory, or Observer software import com.abien.messageme.business.messaging.entity.Message; design patterns. All of these capabilities are import javax.persistence.EntityManager; already built in and result in far less code import javax.persistence.PersistenceContext; public class MessageStore { than with the Java SE counterpart. @PersistenceContext When you are developing applications EntityManager em; with the ECB pattern, the ECB layering public void store(Message message){ em.persist(message); should evolve iteratively and not be forced } in a top-down way. You should start with } the persistence (Entity) layer, perform unit testing, and then implement the Code Listing 7: Standalone JPA unit tests boundary layer. For building the unit test,

the EntityManager and the associated trans- package com.abien.messageme.business.messaging.entity; actions need to be created and managed import javax.persistence.*; manually (as shown in Listing 7). import org.junit.Test; The persistence.xml file must also be @Test adjusted to handle standalone execution. public void mappingSmokeTest() { Specifically, the transaction type should be EntityManagerFactory emf = Persistence.createEntityManagerFactory("test"); changed to RESOURCE_LOCAL and a JDBC EntityManager em = emf.createEntityManager(); EntityTransaction tx = em.getTransaction(); connection (instead of a datasource) must be tx.begin(); configured explicitly, as shown in Listing 8. em.persist(new Message("duke")); When building the control layer, note that tx.commit(); } its content will be the product of entity and

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_java.indd 53 11/19/10 2:32:37 PM 54 Java EE 6

or a presenter. CDI managed beans can Code Listing 8: persistence.xml for standalone JPA unit tests be directly bound to the JSF 2 view via EL,

and the boundary (EJB 3.1) can be directly injected into the presenter. The presenter (or a controller) can be directly captured with org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.PersistenceProvider com.abien.messageme.business.messaging.entity.Message an @Stereotype annotation. It works like a true macro—you can place in it CDI annotations that get expanded with the annotation. A stereotype is a regular Java annotation repre- sented by @Stereotype: @Named @RequestScoped @Stereotype @Retention(RUNTIME) @Target(TYPE) public @interface Presenter {} tion is duplicated and renamed @View, and Because the unit test and the IndexPresenter the bean is renamed IndexView: reside in the same package, the default This custom stereotype can be applied visible fields can be set directly. Private instead of @Named and @RequestScoped— @View fields with public setters can be used, but just like a macro. All CDI annotations iden- public class IndexView { packagewide fields are good enough in most tifying the presenter pattern can then be private Message message = new cases and can reduce code size. replaced with Message(); Listing 9 shows how to test the presenta- public Message getMessage() { tion logic by mocking out the IndexView as @Presenter return message; well as the boundary Messaging class. The public class Index { } test, which invokes the IndexPresenter // } .save() method, is successful if the method } store gets invoked exactly once with the The IndexPresenter bean gets the old Message-Instance being returned by the The purpose of the presenter is to imple- @Presenter annotation. As the following IndexView. Verifying the invocation means ment presentation logic. The structure of code shows, the only purpose of the passing the mock to the Mockito.verify() the presenter is tightly coupled with the IndexPresenter bean in this case is to imple- method. The IndexView is mocked out to view, in that the state of a JSF component ment the presentation logic. manipulate the return value without inter- in the view is mapped to a property inside acting with the JSF rendering. the presenter. The property can be either a @Presenter The Messaging boundary is mocked value (with value binding) or the component public class IndexPresenter { out for a different reason: to verify that the instance itself (with component binding). In @Inject expected method actually gets invoked: trivial cases, there is a one-to-one relation- Messaging boundary; ship between the view and the presenter. @Inject public void save(){ The presenter contains the view’s data as IndexView indexView; boundary.store(indexView well as all the presentation logic. Injecting public void save(){ .getMessage()); the boundary into the presenter involves boundary.store(indexView } using the @Inject annotation. .getMessage()); As the amount of presentation logic } The design of the JSF 2 presentation is grows inside the presenter, the code can } similar to that of a rich Swing application. become harder to maintain and test. With Common patterns such as Model-View- CDI, it is fairly easy to split the monolithic Because the boundary and the view are Controller and their refinements—Supervising presenter into separate data and presenta- injected into the IndexPresenter, they can Controller and Passive View—can be applied tion logic parts. For example, the following be easily mocked out. In a unit test envi- to JSF 2 as well. The main difference between code shows how to refactor the backing ronment, both fields would be set directly JSF and a rich client technology is the way bean from the earlier example by moving with the mock, whereas in a production the view is rendered. In Swing the developer the save method into a newly created environment, the container would perform implements the view in Java, whereas in IndexPresenter bean. The presenter annota- the injection and set the actual dependency. JSF 2 the developer uses XHTML markup.

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

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Code Listing 9: IndexPresenterTest—with mocked-out view and boundary tation and business logic. The EntityManager is already a good enough abstraction of the

package com.abien.messageme.presentation; underlying persistence, so there is no need //...other imports for additional indirections. import org.junit.Before; Maintainable Java EE 6 applications are import org.junit.Test; import static org.mockito.Mockito.*; written according to the YAGNI (You Ain’t Gonna Need It), DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself), public class IndexPresenterTest { and KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principles. private IndexPresenter cut; @Before Design patterns and best practices are intro- public void initialize(){ duced in a bottom-up—not a top-down— this.cut = new IndexPresenter(); fashion. The patterns are always motivated } @Test by functional and nonfunctional require- public void save() { ments, not by the shortcomings of the plat- this.cut.boundary = mock(Messaging.class); form. This approach represents the biggest this.cut.indexView = mock(IndexView.class); Message expected = new Message("duke"); difference between Java EE 6 and previous when(this.cut.indexView.getMessage()).thenReturn(expected); J2EE releases. In J2EE many of the design cut.save(); decisions were made up front, driven by the verify(this.cut.boundary,times(1)).store(expected); } J2EE platform dependencies. } By contrast, the Java EE 6 development process focuses on function: In JSF 2 the values of the component can collisions, developers often had to resort to 1. Write simple code that directly solves the be directly bound to a corresponding class, well-defined naming conventions such as business problem. whereas in Swing they are usually stored in XyzLocal/XyzRemote and XyzBean. In Java 2. Verify the business logic with unit tests. the view itself or in the model. EE 6, interfaces for EJBs and CDIs are now 3. Cut redundancies and improve the design For the implementation of data-driven optional. Public EJB or CDI methods can with refactoring. use cases such as CRUD, the Supervising now expose a “no interface” view, with no 4. Stress-test your application. Controller is a better choice than the loss of functionality. 5. Go back to 1. Passive View. In the Supervising Controller This new functionality makes interfaces Design and architecture are driven by pattern, a single backing bean (IndexView) meaningful again. As opposed to the obliga- concrete requirements rather than generic is responsible for managing both the pre- tory, nondescript use of interfaces with earlier and architectural best practices. By continu- sentation logic and the state of the view. In releases, interfaces in Java EE 6 can be used ally stress-testing your application (at least more-sophisticated use cases, the Passive for the implementation of the Strategy once per week), you can more easily justify a View variant may be more applicable. In the pattern; implementation of a public API; or simple design with hard facts to gain insight Passive View pattern, the backing bean is strict separation of modules, which makes the into system behavior under stress.  split into the view and presentation logic, code more expressive. An interface can also and the presentation logic is extracted from signal the “protected variations” of a system, the IndexView to the IndexPresenter. and direct dependencies between classes can Adam Bien (blog.adam-bien.com) is a Java CDI is best suited for the implementa- be used for code that is less likely to vary. Champion, consultant, lecturer, speaker, tion of the presentation layer. Because of You can safely start without any interfaces software architect, developer, and author of the built-in cross-cutting concerns (such as and introduce them later as the need arises. Java books and articles including Real World transactions, concurrency, asynchronous This approach is fundamentally different Java EE Patterns: Rethinking Best Practices execution, monitoring, and throttling), the from that in Java EE 5. Compared to Java 2 (lulu.com, 2009). He was Oracle Magazine’s boundary of the business logic is realized as Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) from 2010 Java Developer of the Year. an EJB. The business component can be real- 2003, Java EE 6 code is simpler, in terms of ized either as EJBs or CDIs. In general, you the elimination of several layers, indirec- Next Steps can start with CDIs and, over time, replace tions, and abstractions. Unlike J2EE, Java managed beans in special cases with EJBs. EE 6 consists of annotated classes without READ more about CDI The CDI-EJB-CDI (CEC) pattern is the simplest any dependencies on the platform. This bit.ly/9JKUdp and most pragmatic choice for Java EE 6. approach eliminates the need to separate Protected Variations pattern business logic from the infrastructure and bit.ly/cGueFJ Making Interfaces Useful makes the majority of J2EE patterns and best Supervising Controller and Passive View EJB 3.0 (in Java EE 5) required separate practices superfluous. In Java EE 6, simple patterns martinfowler.com/eaaDev interfaces for bean classes. To avoid naming cases can be solved with two layers: presen-

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_java.indd 55 11/19/10 2:33:28 PM 56 Database Developer

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g Quickly Define KPIs and Scorecards That Use Them Build key performance indicators and scorecards in your business intelligence metadata with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g.

rganizations seeking to manage and Middleware’s Control feature in your envi- Creating KPIs Oimprove performance often define key ronment. (See “Using Fusion Middleware Begin the process of meeting your organiza- performance indicators (KPIs) to measure Control to Upload a Repository and Set the tion’s goals by defining KPIs for monitoring their progress. Comprising a measure and a Oracle BI Presentation Catalog Location” sales and margins. To create the KPIs, take target and usually analyzed by dimensions in Oracle Fusion Middleware System the following steps: such as organization, customer, product, Administrator’s Guide for Oracle Business 1. Log in to Oracle Business Intelligence and geography, KPIs can help organizations Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g Release 1 Enterprise Edition 11g, using your quickly focus on activities that have the [11.1.1]—at bit.ly/c4s39M—for information username and password. From the greatest impact on business performance. about how to perform this installation.) home page, select New -> KPI from the Another significant trend in corporate For this column, suppose your organiza- common header area. When prompted to performance management is the introduction has the following goals: improve perfor- select a subject area, select Sales History. tion of scorecards. Scorecards help organi- mance by increasing sales, and improve the 2. The KPI Entry screen will then appear. zations define overall goals—to improve profit on those sales. These goals require This screen enables you to define the corporate profitability or increase customer monitoring performance against the targets actual value and target value measures satisfaction, for example—and break those for both sales and the margins on those for the KPI, as well as an optional time goals down into a series of objectives that sales, defining these as KPIs, and managing offset to show performance as a trend. In will enable them to meet the goals. Each of them through a scorecard. You will use this example, enter "Sales and Costs these objectives and initiatives is associ- Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Fact"."Amount Sold" as the Actual ated with one or more of an organization’s Edition 11g to monitor these goals. Value measure and "Sales and Costs KPIs, so progress toward each objective can be measured. The recent release of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g provides a means of defining KPIs within your business intelligence (BI) metadata and of defining scorecards that make use of those KPIs. This column shows how KPIs are defined in this release and how they can be used to create a basic scorecard that measures progress toward a corporate goal. The example in this column uses Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g with the sample sales (SH) schema that comes with Oracle9i Database and later releases. If you want to walk through the steps and practice the techniques described in this column, download KPI_ORAMAG .rpd from oracle.com/technetwork/issue- archive/2010/10-nov/o60bi-170650 .zip and install it, using Oracle Fusion Figure 1: Defining the actual and target values for a KPI

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_RITTMAN.indd 56 11/19/10 4:47:52 PM Database Developer Business Intelligence by Mark Rittman 57

Fact"."Amount Sold Target" as the Target Value measure, and leave the Enable trending checkbox unchecked, as shown in Figure 1. Click Next to proceed to the Dimensionality screen. Now that you have chosen the actual and target value measures for the KPI, the next step enables you to select the dimensions by which this KPI can be analyzed. 3. In this example, you want users to be able to switch the product category for which the KPI is displayed but you want the year, 2001, to stay constant (or “pinned”). To do this, click the Add button on the Dimensionality screen, select the “Times”.”Calendar Year” attribute, and select 2001 for Value. Then click Add again to add the “Products”.”Product Category” attribute Figure 2: Defining the high and low thresholds for a KPI column, but leave Value as Not Pinned. Click Next to proceed to the next step in the process: defining the thresholds. 4. On the Thresholds screen, you can specify values that will determine whether the performance achieved war- rants an OK, Warning, or Critical indication. In this example, performance will be considered OK if it is within 90 percent of the target and critical if it falls below 70 percent. To define these thresholds, enter "Sales and Costs Fact"."Amount Sold Target" * .90 as the first threshold value and "Sales and Costs Fact"."Amount Figure 3: The KPI watchlist, showing performance across all product categories Sold Target" * .70 as the second, as shown in Figure 2. ensure that sales have a target margin two KPIs you created previously onto the 5. Click Next to proceed to the next step, of 40 percent). Use the same attribute watchlist on the right. The selected KPIs where you can define related docu- columns for the KPI dimensionality, and will then be displayed in a grid format, ments for the KPI. This enables users enter the values 25 and 10 as the two showing the actual and target values, to reference other analyses, external thresholds. Once complete, save the along with the variance and the per- Web pages, and documents that can KPI to the Web catalog, using the name centage variance, as shown in Figure 3. be used to support the KPI. For this Margin Maintenance. 3. The KPI watchlist will be pinned to the example, however, there are no related year 2001, per your KPI definitions, but documents, so click Finish to move to Displaying KPIs, Using a KPI Watchlist it will enable users to select the product the final steps, where you can name and Now that you have defined two KPIs, you category. To select a specific product save the KPI. can give users a means of displaying these category, use the list next to the “Sales 6. Now repeat this process to create the on a dashboard through a KPI watchlist. To History”.”Products”.”Product Category” second KPI, which will be used to monitor create a KPI watchlist, take the following label above the KPI watchlist and select the margin made on sales. Enter the steps: a category such as Photo or Peripherals "Sales and Costs Fact"."% Unit 1. From the Oracle Business Intelligence and Accessories. Note how the KPI Margin" measure for Actual Value, home page, select New -> KPI Watchlist. values are recalculated in response to but this time enter the literal value 40 2. From the Catalog view on the left-hand your product category changes in this for Target Value (because you want to side of the screen, drag and drop the dimension and how the status changes

oracle magazine January/February 2011

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to reflect the values compared to the thresholds you chose earlier.

Creating a Scorecard Now that you have defined your KPIs, you can arrange them into a simple scorecard to help achieve your organization’s goals. Using this scorecard, you will define an objective, “Improve Performance,” that breaks down into two contributing objectives, “Increase Sales” and “Maintain Margins.” Users will be able to use this scorecard to view progress toward the organization’s goal, either for all product categories or for any one category in particular. To create the scorecard, take the following steps: 1. Log in to Oracle Business Intelligence Figure 4: Displaying scorecard objectives in a strategy tree Enterprise Edition 11g using your username and password, and select selected—but this time creating a third targets and thresholds to enable them to New -> Scorecard. When prompted, objective, Maintain Margins—and measure progress across the organization. name the scorecard Organizational associate the Margin Maintenance KPI Oracle ss Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g Performance and click OK to accept the with it. gives you the ability to define these objec- default scorecard settings. Your Strategy panel within the score- tives and strategies within your BI environ- 2. With the new scorecard open, navigate to card should now have a primary objective, ment, bringing this important measure of the Strategy panel at the top left corner of Improve Performance, with two con- corporate performance to the desktops of the screen and click the Create Objective tributing objectives, Increase Sales and everyone on your team.  button. Name the new objective Improve Maintain Margins, under it. To complete Performance, and click the Save button the initial scorecard, you will now create a just above the text box to save the new strategy tree to show how these objectives objective to the scorecard definition. are related. Mark Rittman is an 3. With the objective you just created To create a new strategy tree, navigate Oracle ACE director and selected in the Strategy panel, repeat to the Strategy panel at the top left of cofounder of Rittman this process to create another objective, the screen and this time click the View Mead Consulting, a U.K.- naming it Increase Sales (this Strategy Tree button. When the strategy based Oracle partner new objective should be located under tree appears, expand the entries under the providing specialized the Improve Performance objective, objectives to see the KPIs and their values, BI, data warehousing, and performance to indicate that it contributes to the as shown in Figure 4. management solutions. broader objective). This strategy tree shows that the Sales When adding this new objective, Performance objective is being met across Next Steps assign a KPI to it. To do so, use the all product categories but the Maintain Catalog panel on the bottom left of Margin objective is not, contributing to a DOWNLOAD sample code for this column the screen and drag and drop the Sales warning about the overall objective. Use oracle.com/technetwork/issue-archive/ Performance KPI onto the Objectives the dimension selector above the strategy 2010/10-nov/o60bi-170650.zip and KPIs list for the objective. Click OK to tree to focus on individual product catego- READ more about Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise save this objective. ries to see how each of them is performing Edition 11g 4. Now repeat the previous step, with the against the targets and the thresholds you oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/ Improve Performance objective initially defined earlier. enterprise-edition-066546.html business intelligence administration Oracle Fusion Middleware System Administrator’s Download Oracle Business Summary Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g Organizations often use KPIs and score- Edition 11g Release 1 (11.1.1) oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/ cards to measure their performance in download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/ bi-enterprise-edition/downloads bi.1111/e10541/toc.htm terms of reaching an objective, setting

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_RITTMAN.indd 58 11/19/10 4:48:51 PM Database Developer BROWSER-BASED BY DAVID PEAKE 59

ORACLE APPLICATION EXPRESS 4.0 Extend Your Applications Use plug-ins with Oracle Application Express 4.0 to add custom components.

racle Application Express 4.0 intro- appeal to the demonstration application. 4. For Page Type, select Report and Form. Oduced a plug-in architecture that With the EMP table still open in the Object Enter EMP for Table Name, click Add Page, enables developers to extend their applica- Browser, follow these steps: and click Create. tions with custom item and region types, 1. Click UI Defaults on the menu. 5. On the summary page, click Create. processes, and dynamic actions. Several 2. Click Edit. Next you’ll install two plug-ins into the plug-ins are free for downloading from 3. Click EMPNO in the table to open the Employees application that will help users Oracle Technology Network, and more than Column Defaults page for the EMPNO input data easily into the application’s 40 plug-ins developed by members of the column. Phone Number and Rating fields. You’ll also Oracle Application Express community are 4. Under General Defaults, replace EMPNO install a plug-in that generates an employee available from an external Website. in the Label field with Employee Number organization chart and adds it to the applica- This column walks you through building and then click Apply Changes. tion’s report page. an application that implements and uses 5. Repeat the preceding step to change the three existing plug-ins. You can run through labels for the ENAME, MGR, HIREDATE, DOWNLOADING AND INSTALLING these steps on the hosted instance of Oracle SAL, COMM, and DEPTNO columns to, PLUG-INS Application Express 4.0 at apex.oracle.com. respectively, Employee Name, Manager, Download the following plug-ins from Oracle (You must request a free workspace to use Hire Date, Salary, Commission, and Technology Network at oracle.com/ this hosted instance.) You can also use a Department. technetwork/developer-tools/apex/ local instance of Oracle Application Express plugins-155231.html, and unzip them to a 4.0. This exercise is based on the EMP table, CREATING THE DEMONSTRATION convenient location on your system: which is available by default in the database. APPLICATION • Masked Text. This item-type plug-in makes To create the demonstration application, it easy for users to enter fixed-width, MODIFYING THE EMP TABLE follow these steps: formatted data (such as dates, phone You’ll build a database application that 1. From the Oracle Application Express numbers, and Social Security numbers). enables users to view and edit employee data. home page, select Application Builder. • Star Rating. This item-type plug-in enables Before you create the application, you need to 2. Click Create. For Application Type, select your application’s users to rate something add two new columns to the EMP table and Database and From Scratch. by clicking a star icon representing a rating change some user interface defaults. Log in to 3. For Name, enter Employees, and then in any range from 0 to 99, inclusive. Oracle Application Express, and follow these click Next. Next, download and unzip the Google steps to add PHONE_NUMBER and RATING

columns to the EMP table: Organization Chart 1. From the Oracle Application Express KING home page, select SQL Workshop -> 7839 Object Browser. President 2. Select the EMP table from the list. BLAKE CLARK JONES 3. Click Add Column. Enter PHONE_NUMBER 7698 7782 7566 for Add Column, change its Datatype to Manager Manager Manager VARCHAR2, enter 14 for Length, click ALLEN WARD MARTIN TURNER JAMES MILLER SCOTT FORD Next, and click Finish. 7499 7521 7654 7844 7900 7934 7788 7902 4. Select the EMP table from the list again. Salesman Salesman Salesman Salesman Clerk Clerk Analyst Analyst 5. Click Add Column, enter RATING for Add ADAMS SMITH Column, enter 1 for Precision, click Next, 7876 7369 and click Finish. Clerk Clerk Now you’ll change some of the EMP table’s column labels to add some visual Figure 1: Organization chart generated by the Google OrgChart plug-in

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Visualizations plug-ins from apex-plugin .com, the community plug-in site. This set of dynamic-action, region-type plug-ins includes one that generates an organization chart from the EMP table. To install the plug-ins, follow these steps: 1. From Application Builder, select the Employees application. 2. Click Shared Components. Under User Interface, click Plug-Ins. 3. Click Import, click Browse, navigate to the location where you unzipped the Masked Text plug-in, and select item_type_ Figure 2: Data entry assisted by plug-ins plugin_com_oracle_apex_masked_field .sql. Click Next, click Next, click Install enter 5 for Number of Stars, and then number you entered appears as Allen’s Plug-In, and then click Apply Changes. click Apply Changes. phone number. 4. Click Import, click Browse, navigate to To implement the region-type plug-in, the location where you unzipped the Star follow these steps: Conclusion Rating plug-in, and select item_type_ 1. From Application Builder, click the Oracle Application Express plug-ins enable plugin_com_oracle_apex_star_rating Employees application and navigate to you to extend your applications easily with .sql. Click Next, click Next, click Install Page 1. customizable components. Once you’ve Plug-In, and click Apply Changes. 2. Click Create, and select Region on this imported and installed plug-ins, you use 5. Click Import, click Browse, navigate page. them in much the same way as you use stan- to where you unzipped the Google 3. Select Plug-ins, select Google OrgChart, dard Oracle Application Express components. Visualizations plug-ins, and select and then click Next. You can choose among plug-ins developed region_type_plugin_com_logica_apex_ 4. Enter Organization Chart for Title, by the Oracle Application Express team or googlevis_orgchart.sql. Click Next, click and click Next. the community. And you can build your own Next, click Install Plug-In, and click 5. Select Small for Size, select Yes for Allow plug-ins by using PL/SQL. For information Apply Changes. HTML, and click Next. on building plug-ins, see Patrick Wolf’s blog Click Examples. Copy the second block of posting “Oracle APEX 4.0: How to create a Using Plug-Ins SQL code, paste it into Region Source, and Plug-in” at bit.ly/cJapC2.  Now you’ll replace standard Oracle then click Create Region. Application Express components with the Click the Run button to run the application. David Peake (david item-type plug-ins and define a plug-in You can see the organization chart, shown in [email protected]) region. To implement the item-type Figure 1, at the bottom of the report page. is a principal product plug-ins, follow these steps: In the tabular portion of the report page, manager in Oracle’s 1. Click the Employees application in click the edit link (the pencil icon) for the Server Technologies Application Builder, and click 2-Emp to employee named Allen to modify his record. division. He has been navigate to Page 2. Click in the Phone Number field in the form, with Oracle since 1993. 2. In the Page Rendering section, double- and enter a phone number (including area P2_PHONE_NUMBER click the item. code) by typing its 10 digits. Note that the field Next Steps 3. Under Name, change the Display As will not accept any nonnumeric characters; value to Masked Field [Plug-in]. Note the parentheses that surround the area code READ more Browser-Based that the Settings section changes to show and the hyphen that separates the phone bit.ly/b4rudD custom attributes for Input Mask and number’s first three digits from the last four GET plug-ins Placeholder. Click Apply Changes. are supplied by the plug-in. Now hover the bit.ly/cov4Lv 4. Double-click the P2_RATING item. cursor over the star icons in the Rating field apex-plugin.com 5. Under Name, change the Display As value and click the fourth icon from the left to give LEARN how to create an Oracle Application Express plug-in to Star Rating [Plug-in]. Under Settings, Allen a four-star rating. Figure 2 shows data “Oracle APEX 4.0: How to create a Plug-in” being entered into the Phone Number field bit.ly/cJapC2 DOWNLOAD Oracle Application Express and a star being selected from the star icons. VISIT the Oracle Application Express oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/apex/ Click Apply Changes. In the report, you can discussion forum downloads bit.ly/cfken4 now see 4 as Allen’s rating, and the phone

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_BROWSER.indd 60 11/22/10 12:08:02 PM DBA Oracle Exadata By Arup Nanda 61

Oracle Exadata Storage server Simulation Demonstrates Performance Use Oracle Exadata simulation in SQL Performance Analyzer to help predict how your application will perform on Oracle Exadata.

he newest disrupter in the database Code Listing 1: Creating a SQL tuning set Tmarket is Oracle Exadata, which improves the performance of any type of begin application. But for those considering the dbms_sqltune.create_sqlset( sqlset_name => 'ExadataSimul1', move to Oracle Exadata, the big question is description => 'SQL Tuning Set for Exadata Simulation'); probably how your existing applications— end; running on a traditional database—will perform on Oracle Exadata. How can you Code Listing 2: Adding SQL statements to the SQL tuning set from the cursor cache know the answer before you actually take the leap to Oracle Exadata? In Oracle begin Database 11g Release 2, there is a new dbms_sqltune.capture_cursor_cache_sqlset ( addition that allows you to simulate and sqlset_name => 'ExadataSimul1', measure the activities of your database time_limit => 120, repeat_interval => 10 under Oracle Exadata without actually ); investing in an Oracle Exadata appliance. In end; this article, I will show you how to use this capability to predict the performance you Where’s the Performance? ORDER_QTY—is computed, and, finally, can expect for your applications running on Of the many ingredients in the secret sauce the result is returned to the user. The table Oracle Exadata. that makes Oracle Exadata so fast, it’s the could potentially have 1 billion rows, and the intelligence in the storage cells—where the number of rows where CUST_ID = 1000 could Basis for Simulation Oracle Exadata storage is located—that has be just 100, so the database has to get all 1 Oracle Database 11g Release 1 introduced a the largest impact. The storage cells know billion rows to sort through them to find the new tool—SQL Performance Analyzer—as a the pattern of the data they store, so they can matching rows. The I/O subsystem will still part of the Oracle Real Application Testing intelligently return only relevant data, rather need to return all the blocks of the table to the suite (see my Oracle Magazine March/ than all data. Here is a simple query that server process. The storage in this case does April 2008 article “Performing Through illustrates the point: not know the underlying data structure, so it Changes,” at bit.ly/ckWiG1). This tool allows can’t differentiate relevant data from the rest. you to capture SQL statements from any select sum(order_qty) In an Oracle Real Application Clusters database and replay them in a new environ- from sales (Oracle RAC) system, there is yet another ment to uncover potential issues and predict where cust_id = 1000 issue. Parallel query slaves could be spun off behavior in the new target environment. on multiple instances. They send the data The target environment may be structur- In a traditional Oracle database, the server they gather to the query coordinator in a ally different from the current production process issues the command to retrieve all different instance for collation over the inter- environment, with more or fewer indexes blocks from the SALES table to the buffer connect, saturating the interconnect hard- and materialized views, using different cache (located in the system global area), if ware with this traffic. In addition, the process infrastructures, or running under different they are not there already. Then the session of transferring blocks over the interconnect session parameters. In Oracle Database 11g sifts through the accumulated data to identify also consumes CPU and requires latches, Release 2, the scope of SQL Performance rows where CUST_ID = 1000. Those rows which in turn requires further CPU cycles. Analyzer is extended to simulate the func- are copied to the program global area of the Therefore, the greater the demand for blocks tionality of Oracle Exadata. server process, the sum of another column— from the storage system, the greater the load

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on CPU and I/O and the interconnect band- Code Listing 3: Running an example query width—and the worse the query performance.

This is exactly where Oracle Exadata select prod_name, cust_state_province, channel_desc, sum(amount_sold) works its wonders—it knows the general from sales s, customers c, products p, channels c where s.cust_id = c.cust_id distribution of data in table columns at the and s.prod_id = p.prod_id storage cells. When the aforementioned and s.channel_id = c.channel_id query is issued, the storage cells do not just and c.cust_year_of_birth between 1960 and 1970 group by prod_name, cust_state_province, channel_desc return all the data from the table—they filter data at the storage level. The server process does not get all the blocks, but rather only Code Listing 4: Creating an analysis task those blocks that could potentially satisfy the condition, and then computes the sum variable ret clob from the relevant rows from those blocks. set long 999999 begin The demand on the storage is reduced from :ret := 1 billion rows—the total number of rows in dbms_sqlpa.create_analysis_task( the table—to just 100—the number of rows sqlset_name => 'ExadataSimul1', task_name => 'ExadataSimulSPA1'); where CUST_ID = 1000. The I/O waits are end; reduced, enabling the storage subsystem to / service more clients without putting them print ret in queues. But the reduced load on storage is not the only Oracle Exadata benefit: the Code Listing 5: Executing a task without Oracle Exadata storage simulation reduced number of buffers in the buffer cache means less contention for latches and sub- begin sequently less CPU consumption as well. In a dbms_sqlpa.set_analysis_task_parameter ('ExadataSimulSPA1', 'TIME_LIMIT','UNLIMITED'); typically busy system, Oracle Exadata could dbms_sqlpa.set_analysis_task_parameter ('ExadataSimulSPA1', deliver several orders of magnitude difference 'LOCAL_TIME_LIMIT',300); in performance for this query and data. :ret := dbms_sqlpa.execute_analysis_task ( Now that you know how Oracle Exadata task_name => 'ExadataSimulSPA1', execution_type => 'test execute', speeds up the queries, the next natural ques- execution_name => 'INITIAL', tion may be, does it work for your application? execution_params => DBMS_ADVISOR.arglist ('cell_simulation_ If your application does a lot of reads, then it enabled','FALSE'), execution_desc => 'Exadata simulation disabled' exerts pressure on the storage and pushes a ); lot of buffers through the cluster interconnect. end; Oracle Exadata will reduce that pressure with significantly fewer reads (because the storage am going to show the process using APIs. (For workload that can be captured in the returns fewer blocks to the database nodes), steps on using Oracle Enterprise Manager, STS. Listing 3 shows a query that per- so you can expect a dramatic performance see the Oracle By Example tutorial at bit.ly/ forms a considerable amount of I/O and difference. On the other hand, an application bFaV7r.) Here are the steps: is perfect for this demo. This query is that does few reads may see a lesser perfor- 1. Create a SQL tuning set (STS). Listing based on the SH sample schema. When mance gain. Instead of guessing about your 1 shows how to create an STS named this query runs, it will be captured in the application’s performance change following ExadataSimul1. ExadataSimul1 STS automatically. a move to Oracle Exadata, you can use Oracle 2. With the STS created, add the relevant 4. Create an analysis task named Exadata simulation in SQL Performance SQL statements to it. There are several ExadataSimulSPA1 to subject the SQL Analyzer to help you predict performance ways to do this. The simplest approach statements in the ExadataSimul1 STS to gains. Note that in this initial offering, only is to create a job that scours the cursor Oracle Exadata simulation, as shown in a data warehouse decision-support system cache in the shared pool and adds the Listing 4. workload is simulated. SQL statements found to the STS. Listing 5. With the STS created and populated, start 2 shows how to do that every 10 seconds the simulations. First, execute the analysis Simulating Oracle Exadata for 120 seconds. The execution of this task with Oracle Exadata simulation dis- You can perform the Oracle Exadata simula- command will wait on the screen for 120 abled—with the cell_simulation_enabled tion in SQL Performance Analyzer in two seconds, so you will have to create a dif- parameter set to false—as shown in ways—using Oracle Enterprise Manager and ferent session for the next step. Listing 5. The task will run the SQL state- using APIs provided with Oracle Database. I 3. In a different session, run some example ments inside the STS.

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_nanda.indd 62 11/22/10 11:11:12 AM Oracle exadata 63

Execution Statistics: differences in performance clearly. Impact on Value Value Impact Figure 1 shows a partial output from the Stat Name Workload Before After on SQL report that compares the execution statistics. elapsed_time 2.178138 The report clearly shows the predicted impact parse_time .023518 of Oracle Exadata on I/O interconnect bytes. cpu_time .812998 In the first run—with Oracle Exadata simu- user_io_time 3.603555 lation disabled—the number of bytes was buffer_gets 3295 25,174,016. In the second run—with Oracle Cost 0% 529 529 0% Exadata simulation enabled—the number Reads 3073 of bytes was only 2,763,712, or about a tenth Writes 0 of the bytes in the first run—a significant io_interconnect_bytes 88.99% 25174016 2763712 89.02% improvement by any count. Rows 13803 13803 The online version of this article, at bit.ly/ Figure 1: Partial output of comparison report cwvuPq, concludes with additional analysis of the Oracle Exadata simulation results. Code Listing 6: Executing a task with Oracle Exadata storage simulation Conclusion

begin One of the key ingredients of the superior :ret := dbms_sqlpa.execute_analysis_task ( performance of the Oracle Exadata appli- task_name => 'ExadataSimulSPA1', ance is the ability of the storage to return execution_type => 'test execute', execution_name => 'EXASIMUL', only the relevant data blocks—not the entire execution_params => dbms_advisor.arglist ('cell_simulation_ table. This minimizes the I/O at the data- enabled','TRUE'), base servers and results in less I/O across execution_desc => 'Exadata simulation enabled' ); the interconnect and fewer CPU cycles. But end; if you want to predict how much I/O is saved on specific SQL statements from your actual Code Listing 7: Executing a comparison task production database, you can perform the Oracle Exadata simulation on any Oracle Database 11g Release 2 database with tradi- begin :ret := dbms_sqlpa.execute_analysis_task ( tional storage and get a fairly accurate esti- task_name => 'ExadataSimulSPA1', mate of the I/O savings in Oracle Exadata.  execution_type => 'compare performance', execution_params=> dbms_advisor.arglist('comparison_metric', 'io_interconnect_bytes') Arup Nanda (arup@ ); end; proligence.com) has been an Oracle DBA for more than 14 years, handling Code Listing 8: Getting the comparison report all aspects of database administration. He was set lines 300 pages 0 trimspool on long 9999 Oracle Magazine’s DBA of the Year in 2003. spool exasimul1_rep.html select dbms_sqlpa.report_analysis_task ('ExadataSimulSPA1','HTML','TYPICAL','ALL') from dual Next Steps / spool off READ online-only article content bit.ly/cwvuPq 6. Next, run the same execution with Oracle how to execute a comparison task where LEARN more about Exadata simulation enabled—with the the metric to be compared is the I/O SQL Performance Analyzer cell_simulation_enabled parameter set interconnect bytes from each execution. Oracle Database PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference to true—as shown in Listing 6. The task 8. Finally, it’s time to generate the com- bit.ly/dyIbAQ will run the SQL statements inside the parison report. The best way to visualize “Performing Through Changes” STS and simulate the process of running the report is in HTML output. Listing 8 bit.ly/ckWiG1 the statements on Oracle Exadata. outputs the report to an HTML file named EXPLORE the Oracle by Example on 7. After both executions, it’s time to exasimul1_rep.html. Now you can open Exadata Simulation bit.ly/bFaV7r perform the comparison. Listing 7 shows the report in a browser and examine the

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_nanda.indd 63 11/22/10 11:11:42 AM Help Us Help the Polar Bear

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OraclE DATABASE On History, Invisibility, and Moving Our technologist counts on histograms, proves hash tables by example, and moves CLOBs.

have a question about using histograms database doesn’t store more than 254 rows of 15 end ) len31, I with character data. I’m trying to improve information for a single histogram. 16 rpad( 'x', 32, 'x' ) || performance on a set of very large tables. My That aside, yes, you are correct that for 17 chr( ascii('A')+ table T1 has more than 120 million rows and varchar2 data, only so many bytes of informa- 18 case when rownum < 20000 is not partitioned, and it is representative tion are stored in the histogram for each of 19 then 0 of the other tables in my schema. The data the 254 values. That is, the leading edge of 20 else mod(rownum,12) is such that now a couple of key varchar2 the varchar2 string, not necessarily the entire 21 end ) len32, columns have very skewed data. string, is stored in the histogram. I stress the 22 rpad( 'x', 33, 'x' ) || I’ve gathered histograms on this informa- word bytes here because in many cases, bytes 23 chr( ascii('A')+ tion and have been pleased with the results. are not the same as characters in a varchar2 24 case when rownum < 20000 The optimizer is better able to gauge the esti- string. If you are using a multibyte character 25 then 0 mated cardinalities during optimization and set, it is quite possible that 32 bytes is able to 26 else mod(rownum,12) has been coming up with better plans. store far fewer than 32 characters. 27 end ) len33 I’m concerned about the future, however. I can show you this 32-byte limit rather 28 from all_objects I’ve heard that histograms gathered easily by running a small test. First I’ll create 29 / against varchar2 columns have limitations. a table containing various varchar2 strings. Table created. Specifically, I’ve heard that only the first few These strings will be of different fixed lengths, characters are considered when the histo- and their leading edge will be constant. I’ll As I’ve generated the data, I’ve also grams are being generated, so that as my var- create four columns—one with 30 characters introduced some skew to it. If you look at char2 data gets longer and longer, I might see of ‘x’ followed by a single character of A-L, the function for assigning the last letter— a decrease in the efficiency of my histograms. the next with 31 characters of ‘x’ followed by a after all of the ‘x’s—you’ll see that the first Is this true, and what are the limits? single character A–L, then 32 ‘x’s, and finally 20,000 rows (out of about 72,000) will have Before I address the question, let’s first 33 ‘x’s—all followed by a single character, the letter ‘A’ assigned to them. After the first define what a histogram is. A histogram—in A–L. This will create strings of 31, 32, 33, and 20,000 rows, I’ll get an even distribution of the context of statistics—contains informa- 34 bytes in length (I am using a single-byte A–L values. That means that strings that end tion that gives the optimizer a clear picture character set, so I know that a byte is the in ‘A’ happen often and that strings that end of the data in a column. In many cases, the same as a character in my system). in B–L do not happen often. histogram on a column will tell the optimizer Next I’ll gather statistics and ensure that precisely how many rows in the table have SQL> create table t I have histograms that provide a perfect a certain value, so that when the optimizer 2 as picture of the data: parses a query in the form “where column_ 3 select with_histogram = ‘some value’,” the opti- 4 rpad( 'x', 30, 'x' ) || SQL> begin mizer will be able to very accurately estimate 5 chr( ascii('A')+ 2 dbms_stats.gather_table_stats how many rows that predicate will return. 6 case when rownum < 20000 3 ( user, 'T', When the column with a histogram generated 7 then 0 4 method_opt => against it has fewer than 255 distinct values, 8 else mod(rownum,12) 'for all columns size 12', the histogram will contain a complete picture 9 end ) len30, 5 estimate_percent=> 100 of the values in the column. When the column 10 rpad( 'x', 31, 'x' ) || 6 ); has more than 254 distinct values, the histo- 11 chr( ascii('A')+ 7 end; gram will become less accurate but will still 12 case when rownum < 20000 8 / paint a good picture of the data in the column. 13 then 0 This 255-distinct-value limit is because the 14 else mod(rownum,12) PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_asktom.indd 65 11/22/10 12:49:06 PM 66 Ask Tom

The method_opt parameter here is key Code Listing 1: Checking the optimizer’s use of histograms on “long” columns for this example, and I used it to gather his-

tograms for all the columns in the table. The SQL> set autotrace on explain resulting histograms will contain 12 rows of SQL> select 'len30', count(*) from t where len30 = rpad('x',30,'x')||'A' 2 union all information for each column—for each of 3 select 'len30', count(*) from t where len30 = rpad('x',30,'x')||'B' the distinct A–L values I loaded. Because I 4 union all have 12 distinct values in each column, this 5 select 'len31', count(*) from t where len31 = rpad('x',31,'x')||'A' 6 union all will provide a perfect picture of the count of 7 select 'len31', count(*) from t where len31 = rpad('x',31,'x')||'B' rows for each value. 8 union all Now I can use explain plan on a simple 9 select 'len32', count(*) from t where len32 = rpad('x',32,'x')||'A' 10 union all query to see how many rows the optimizer 11 select 'len32', count(*) from t where len32 = rpad('x',32,'x')||'B' believes would be returned, given a predi- 12 union all cate on each of the columns, as shown in 13 select 'len33', count(*) from t where len33 = rpad('x',33,'x')||'A' 14 union all Listing 1. 15 select 'len33', count(*) from t where len33 = rpad('x',33,'x')||'B' As you can see, the optimizer is able to 16 / very accurately estimate the cardinality 'LEN3 COUNT(*) of each predicate as long as the string is ——————— ——————————————— 32 bytes or less. So in steps 3, 5, 7, and len30 24307 9 in Listing 1, the estimated cardinality len30 4308 len31 24307 is very exact: the estimate matches the len31 4308 actual count(*) values. However, when the len32 24307 optimizer gets to step 11, the estimated len32 4308 len33 24307 cardinality goes awry. All of a sudden, the len33 4308 optimizer starts guessing “every row will 8 rows selected. be returned,” regardless of what the string Execution Plan ends in. This is because the histogram ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— contains only the first 32 bytes of string Plan hash value: 2994643399 data, and when the optimizer gets to steps ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— 11 through 17, the strings all start with 32 or | Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time | more ‘x’s. In the histogram, they all appear ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— to have the same value. | 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 8 | 268 | 3079 (88)| 00:00:37 | | 1 | UNION-ALL | | | | | | This does not render histograms useless. | 2 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | 32 | | | They are very useful on most data you tend to |* 3 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| T | 24307 | 759K| 385 (1)| 00:00:05 | search on: numbers, dates, and strings less | 4 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | 32 | | | |* 5 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| T | 4308 | 134K| 385 (1)| 00:00:05 | than 33 bytes in length. If you have longer | 6 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | 33 | | | strings, you will typically be performing a |* 7 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| T | 24307 | 783K| 385 (1)| 00:00:05 | text search on them with Oracle Text and the | 8 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | 33 | | | |* 9 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| T | 4308 | 138K| 385 (1)| 00:00:05 | CONTAINS operator. | 10 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | 34 | | | You should be aware of this histogram |* 11 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| T | 71696 | 2380K| 385 (1)| 00:00:05 | implementation, however, because it could | 12 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | 34 | | | |* 13 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| T | 71696 | 2380K| 385 (1)| 00:00:05 | prompt you to store some data attributes | 14 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | 35 | | | differently. For example, suppose you have a |* 15 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| T | 71696 | 2450K| 385 (1)| 00:00:05 | system that stores URLs in a table—an audit | 16 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | 35 | | | |* 17 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| T | 71696 | 2450K| 385 (1)| 00:00:05 | trail, for example. If you look at a URL such ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— as the ones you see on asktom.oracle.com, you’ll discover that the first 39 characters of Predicate Information (identified by operation id): ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— my URL are constant— 3 - filter("LEN30"='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxA') 5 - filter("LEN30"='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxB') http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p 7 - filter("LEN31"='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxA') 9 - filter("LEN31"='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxB') 11 - filter("LEN32"='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxA') —regardless of what page you end up on 13 - filter("LEN32"='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxB') in my site. Having a histogram on that data 15 - filter("LEN33"='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxA') 17 - filter("LEN33"='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxB') would not be very useful.

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_asktom.indd 66 11/22/10 12:49:32 PM Ask Tom 67

However, what if I stored the data in Code Listing 2: Function f counts calls and stores information a more meaningful way, such as storing

the URL in a series of fields—specifically, SQL> create or replace function f( x in varchar2 ) return number using the fields PROTOCOL, HOST, PORT, 2 as 3 begin and PATH? In this case, the PROTOCOL 4 dbms_application_info.set_client_info(userenv('client_info')+1 ); field would contain values such as HTTP or 5 return length(x); HTTPS, the HOST field would store asktom 6 end; 7 / .oracle.com (and other host names), the

PORT field would contain one of the stan- Function created. dard port numbers used by typical HTTP, and the PATH field would be the unique Code Listing 3: Calling function f and measuring CPU consumed bit. You have the ability to render the original URL in its entirety, so you haven’t SQL> exec :cpu := dbms_utility.get_cpu_time; lost any data. And you have the new ability SQL> exec dbms_application_info.set_client_info(0); to provide even better searching capabili- SQL> set autotrace traceonly statistics; ties, because you have the components all SQL> select owner, f(owner) from stage; split out. You also gain the ability to com- 71653 rows selected. press this data in the database very easily. Statistics (Oracle’s basic and advanced compression ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— for tables works by removing repetitive ... attributes in a block. PROTOCOL, HOST, 71653 rows processed and PORT values would all repeat often.) SQL> set autotrace off And you would now have an attribute SQL> select dbms_utility.get_cpu_time-:cpu cpu_hsecs, (PATH) that would be able to support a his- userenv('client_info') from dual; togram nicely. CPU_HSECS USERENV('CLIENT_INFO') This is just another case where knowing ——————————————— ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— how things work enables you to implement 164 71653 a solution more efficiently or at least justify why you have chosen to do something in a rather than having to re-evaluate the sub- call into a scalar subquery, and I rerun the particular fashion. query many times. example, as shown in Listing 4. The scalar I encourage you to take a look at what In answer to the question, however, you subquery was called only 69 times (over 0.25 a colleague of mine, Jonathan Lewis, has cannot “see” the hash table anywhere. It CPU seconds). The effect of this scalar sub- written on this subject recently as well. See is an internal data structure that lives in query caching is now apparent. the Next Steps box at the end of this column your session memory for the duration of for links to his excellent series of articles on the query. Once the query is finished, it Direct Access to Partition histograms and the 32-byte limit. goes away. It is a cache associated with your We have set up some list-partitioned tables. query—nothing more, nothing less. My developers want to run direct statements Scalar Subquery Caching You can, however, “see” the hash table in (inserts, updates, selects) against partitions, Reading the posting at bit.ly/cSqDc6, I won- action by measuring how many times your not against the tables. For example, they dered about this part of Jonathan Lewis’ function is called. In Listing 2, I start by cre- would like to use this: reply: “If so, the cache is probably a hash ating a function that counts how many times table of 256 rows in 8i and 9i, and 1,024 rows it has been called and stores the results in INSERT INTO status_delta_stg in 10g.” What is this hash table? Where can I CLIENT_INFO in V$SESSION. PARTITION (status_delta_stg_company1). see it in Oracle Database? Now, in Listing 3, I can call that function UPDATE status_fact For readers who might not be able to see from a SQL query and see how much CPU the PARTITION (job_status_fact_company1) the posting in question: it was an article query consumed and how many times the referring to an internal optimization called function was called. Are there any benefits of doing it this way? scalar subquery caching implemented in the The STAGE table is a copy of ALL_ (The optimizer should be able to do partition database. If you execute a scalar subquery OBJECTS, and, as you can see in the Listing 3 elimination if we provide the field we parti- in the context of a larger query, the database statistics, function f was called once per row tioned on in the queries.) will attempt to cache the output of that (71,653 times). And the function processing My main problem with this approach subquery in hopes of reusing it over and over used 1.64 CPU seconds. is that I lose the ability to do partition again during the larger query’s execution Now I simply convert the PL/SQL function exchanges, drops, merges, and so on without

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_asktom.indd 67 11/22/10 12:49:58 PM 68 Ask Tom

having an impact on their code (if I decide to Code Listing 4: Replacing function f with a scalar subquery use a different partition name).

The only time I can see a benefit would be SQL> exec :cpu := dbms_utility.get_cpu_time; during a direct path load. Direct path loads— SQL> dbms_application_info.set_client_info(0); SQL> set autotrace traceonly statistics; using INSERT /*+ APPEND */, for example—

lock the entire segment they are targeting, SQL> select owner, (select f(owner) from dual) f from stage; so if you do 71653 rows selected.

Statistics insert /*+ APPEND */ into t ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— select ... 71653 rows processed

SQL> set autotrace off the entire table T will get locked until you SQL> select dbms_utility.get_cpu_time-:cpu cpu_hsecs, commit. If, however, you are loading userenv('client_info') from dual; data for just one partition and you specify CPU_HSECS USERENV('CLIENT_INFO') the partition ——————————————— ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— 25 69 insert /*+ APPEND */ into t partition (p1) select ... Release 2. One of our Oracle9i Database where field1= scripts moved data from one table to another and field2=; only partition P1 will get locked. Note that when certain conditions applied. The script this insert will fail, of course, if you attempt that copied the data in Oracle9i Database is in PL/SQL or any program will accomplish your to load any data that doesn’t actually belong as follows: task. You can just use straightforward SQL. in partition P1. Now, if I could only convince you to Otherwise, running statements against copy from username/password@dbase upgrade to Oracle Database 11g Release 2. partitions generally would not help your to username/password@dbase append Oracle Database 10g Release 2 will reach end developers improve performance. (Note that target_table using of life a lot sooner than Oracle Database 11g the inserts, updates, and deletes will figure select * from source_table Release 2 will.  out what partitions they must hit and will hit where field1=condition1 only those partitions.) and field2=condition2; Tom Kyte is a database In addition to the negatives of running evangelist in Oracle’s statements against partitions you’ve But with the database upgrade, a field Server Technologies pointed out, there’s at least one more issue that was type LONG in Oracle9i Database division and has worked I foresee. I can easily envision developers is now type CLOB in Oracle Database 10g for Oracle since 1993. He writing WHERE clauses they think resolve Release 2. How do I achieve the old script’s is the author of Expert to a certain partition and then including results in Oracle Database 10g Release 2 Oracle Database Architecture (Apress, 2005, the PARTITION clause in the DML and for a record where one of the fields is a 2010) and Effective Oracle by Design (Oracle having it hit only that one partition they CLOB datatype? Press, 2003), among other books. think the WHERE clause targets—only to Congratulations on migrating to the LOB Next Steps be disappointed that they were wrong (and datatype—you will be much happier once have just caused logical data corruption on you discover how much more flexible large ASK Tom a huge scale). objects are than LONGs. In the past, you Tom Kyte answers your most difficult technology Unless your developers have a specific had to use this deprecated SQL*Plus COPY questions. Highlights from that forum appear in technical, sound, and logical reason, I would command to copy LONG types from place this column. asktom.oracle.com not want this in the code at all. to place, or you had to write a program READ more Tom outside of the database to do it. You cannot Oracle Database Concepts 11g Release 2 (11.2) Better with clob use INSERT as SELECT with LONG types, bit.ly/aonqPP We are currently upgrading from Oracle9i and PL/SQL can handle only LONGs that Expert Oracle Database Architecture, Database to Oracle Database 10g are 32 K or less in size. Second Edition amzn.to/ckGXaR With the CLOB type, you will find that READ more about histograms and the DOWNLOAD Oracle Database 11g a simple 32-byte limit Release 2 bit.ly/awJg5H oracle.com/technetwork/database/ insert into target_table bit.ly/duT7UR enterprise-edition/downloads bit.ly/dD3CZc select * from source_table

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_asktom.indd 68 11/22/10 12:50:25 PM In the Field By David Ferguson 69

Are You Change Enabled? Iterate and inculcate change along with its disruption.

marvel at organizations claiming to the stoic mechanisms that serve to maintain uncertainty of change, the resistive forces I operate in a change-enabled culture. I the status quo. They also strive to reduce the are convinced that the old way of working is have seen my share of enterprise resource impact change has on their people. inextricably linked to future success. They are planning (ERP) application implementa- The people working in change-enabled energetic in support of their position. tions with tumultuous change baked in, but organizations share distinguishing traits as Driving the resistance is a perception of I have yet to see an operating environment well. They are more open minded. They are increasing complexity—a new skill to learn, that could be described as conducive to willing to take calculated risks and, more a new tool to master, and a new way to change. Regretfully for most organizations, importantly, to discuss their successes and accomplish the work, all of which can be very pending application changes are not given failures without reservation or fear of retribu- unsettling. Understandably, most people are the thoughtful consideration they deserve, tion. And they share the belief that a perfect drawn to the familiar ways of the past. You and when planning does occur, it comes way plan is rare—that any plan will need to adapt have to be willing to assume a reasonable too late in the game. over time to deliver results. Honest feedback level of discomfort for progress to be made. The idea that a work environment stands and fair appraisal are essential to keep things Remember, too, that organizations have ready for change in advance of any and all moving on time and on track. a limited capacity for change. Change needs destabilizing/restabilizing events required In change-enabled organizations, trans- to be managed at the highest levels. Too under the banner of process reform is a parency is requisite within the context of many competing initiatives will quickly heroic one. The assertion, however, runs failure. Mistakes often produce revela- overwhelm the absorption rate of those contrary to the natural tendency we all share tions—in fact, they are important learning affected by change, and the anticipated toward normalcy. experiences. In talking about a configuration benefits will be lost. Establish a threshold In the absence of unusual influencing problem related to an Oracle E-Business for the organization’s perceived ability to factors, a process will approximate a steady Suite implementation, an executive sponsor destabilize/restabilize relative to the opera- operating state. This is due in part to human at an Oracle Applications Users Group tional challenges you are facing. behavior. Generally speaking, people protect (OAUG) member company once told me, “If I applaud those of you who truly under- the expected outcome of their work and wish we had not made the original mistake, we stand the dynamics involved in change to avoid the unexpected results brought about never would have fully explored the available enablement and who have incorporated the when changes are made. The unexpected profile options for the feature in question. concepts into your culture. You are breaking can put an individual into an uncomfortable We would not have found a better fit to our ground in areas beneficial to all. For the rest, position. Equally, people are generally more desired operation. And we would not be I hope you’ll consider moving change man- satisfied when things remain relatively stable. where we are today.” Change-enabled orga- agement up on your company’s—and your Stability suggests that actions and events are nizations actively look for an upside in every own—priority list.  somewhat predictable. Associates under- learning experience. stand their roles and their responsibilities to To make change stick, change-enabled the effort at hand. Interactions with others companies ensure that all the methods and David Ferguson is the working within the system are well under- practices inherent to the previous oper- immediate past president stood. Throughput is manageable. We draw ating procedure are permanently retired. of OAUG. Ferguson is a a certain amount of strength and confidence Associates will gravitate to the old way of business process manager from the routine, and it is less stressful. doing business if the opportunity exists with more than 25 years In contrast, change-enabled organizations and the preexisting tool remains in play. of experience working have figured out how to iterate and inculcate Regression returns stability to their work with enterprise technologies and applications change along with the disruption it can bring environment but forestalls proper adoption. within customer service and sales operations. into their culture. They assume a higher I have seen associates take on activist level of risk to the business in exchange for a roles to preserve their current environment. Next Steps higher level of reward. They are less likely to Usually, it is the same people who had been hold onto conventional or historical practice complaining about the very application they JOIN OAUG oaug.com for the sake of stability. They work to remove are now fighting to preserve. Faced with the

oracle magazine January/February 2011

JF11_INTHEFIELD_FERGUSON.indd 69 11/19/10 8:44:00 AM 70 In the Field By Andy Flower

Build Better Data Warehouses The processing capacity of the Oracle Exadata Database Machine means fewer physical structures and better business intelligence.

s a colleague of mine used to say, “If We can do more with Efficient, Integrated, and Green Awe had infinite processing capacity, we With Oracle Exadata, fewer copies and wouldn’t need data warehouses.” Having one Oracle Exadata with reprojections of the same data also mean machine with infinite processing capacity fewer database servers, fewer disks, less would allow our organization to handle both fewer datacenter hardware, and reduced power consumption online transaction processing (OLTP) and our tiles occupied. and datacenter floor space. And with Oracle business intelligence (BI) and analytic needs. Exadata, we get more in a single rack of the All the things needed to produce metrics in that subset is just another physical projec- integrated server and storage platform than an analytic space could be done on demand: tion, or movement, of the same data. With we get in other racks. Plain and simple, integration, computation, and aggregation. Oracle Exadata, however, we create fewer we can do more with Oracle Exadata with physical projections and can create more fewer datacenter tiles occupied and less Enter the Oracle Exadata logical projections of the data in our BI tool energy consumed. Database Machine of choice in our integrated data warehouse There are many other aspects of Oracle No, the Oracle Exadata Database Machine for the same purpose. Exadata that are compelling, and as the is not the infinite machine that will make The second and probably more common number of Oracle Exadata users grows, integration, computation, and aggregation reason we build additional structures above so does the activity in the user com- all on-demand functions. But the Oracle an integrated data warehouse is to improve munity. The Independent Oracle Users Exadata Database Machine helps us to start query performance. Because users of data Group (IOUG) has an increasingly active thinking about simplifying some of the pro- seem to change how and why they use the Oracle Exadata Special Interest Group cessing and gyrations we have to do to build data in the data warehouse, good data (SIG). If you want to know more about the and deliver an efficient data warehouse warehousing teams monitor the usage of Oracle Exadata Database Machine and solution. With Oracle Exadata, we can more their data warehouses so that they can pro- other Oracle Exadata solutions, the Oracle quickly read the data we need to satisfy our actively manage usability and performance Exadata SIG is a great place to learn and queries. Without Oracle Exadata, we need of the database and add performance- and share with some of the Oracle community’s to build separate structures—such as mate- usability-enhancing objects such as indexes, best and brightest.  rialized views—in our data warehouses to materialized views, and OLAP cubes. boost performance. With Oracle Exadata, we Even with Oracle Exadata, it is still a good don’t need to build as many physical struc- idea to actively monitor how the data ware- Andy Flower tures, freeing up more time for using the house is being used. And we will still need ([email protected]) data instead of processing it. to build objects in the database that provide is president of IOUG In general terms, there are two reasons better usability and performance, such as and has been an active for building additional data structures, or OLAP cubes and materialized views. Yet with volunteer with IOUG since even databases, above an integrated data the efficiencies of the database machine, 1998. In his day job, he is warehouse. The first is to make the data we do not have to begin our BI application an information management and BI consultant. easier to consume by our end users and their design with the assumption that we will be reporting and analytic applications. To get building yet another new database. We can Next Steps better usability and to focus our analytic be more dynamic in satisfying changing user applications, we create a new subset of our needs because there is one integrated ware- LEARN more about data in snapshots or data marts to support a house with fewer physical projections that Oracle Exadata SIG and COLLABORATE 11 ioug.org specific analytic or reporting application, and we must also manage and change.

January/February 2011 Oracle.com/oraclemagazine

JF11_INTHEFIELD_FLOWER.indd 70 11/18/10 4:14:07 PM 2 0 o f t h e 2 0 Top Manufacturers

And Over 36,000 Midsize Manufacturers

Get Better Results With Oracle

oracle.com/goto/manufacturing or call 1.800.ORACLE.1

Source: IndustryWeek list of largest publicly held manufacturing companies based on revenue, and internal analysis of midsize manufacturers.

Copyright © 2009, Oracle. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. 72 Analyst’s Corner by DAVID BAUM

The Case for Integrated Systems Management Efficient and cost-effective systems management must also do more.

racle Magazine spoke with Tim systems and IT functions get distributed, troubleshoot problems at the business level, OGrieser, program vice president of virtualized, and outsourced. then they won’t have the correct business enterprise system management software at In a virtualized environment, an applica- context for addressing issues and prioritizing International Data Corporation (IDC), about tion or business process can span many dif- their management activities. For example, managing enterprise information systems ferent servers, some of which may be hosted a line-of-business owner is concerned in an era of outsourcing, virtualization, and by third parties. This is especially the case with fulfilling orders on time, while IT is cloud computing. when you have a multitier or composite appli- concerned about technical metrics such as Oracle Magazine: What is driving IT organiza- cation in which the database is on one server, application uptime and server utilization. tions to adopt integrated systems manage- Oracle Magazine: Why is it important to inte- ment solutions? You need to be grate systems management and customer Grieser: Reducing the cost of operations is the support functions? #1 concern of today’s IT managers. Improving able to monitor and Grieser: When system administrators resolve customer satisfaction levels is a close second. manage service application issues, IT operations staff may IT departments face a dichotomy between need to route service requests to their IT trying to simplify operations while continually levels from end vendors. Many of today’s systems manage- improving service levels. Systems manage- to end. ment tools don’t supply basic information ment software can increase the efficiency of such as version numbers, configuration the IT staff and also reduce operational costs. the applications are somewhere else, the Web settings, and applied patches. Thus it takes Traditionally, IT departments have relied on server is somewhere else, and so on. Even if longer to resolve problems because you have a variety of tools from multiple vendors to each tier appears to be functioning well, there to wait for the vendor to gather those specs. manage various parts of the IT infrastruc- is no guarantee that users will receive ade- Some vendors provide automated channels ture. Third-party tools are not intrinsically quate service levels when their transactions for providing software patches and updates, integrated, which means IT must manually cross tiers. You need to be able to monitor and the information is accessible from integrate them or hire a service organization and manage service levels from end to end. within the enterprise systems management to do it for them. It’s not easy to monitor the Oracle Magazine: How do you measure the console. It’s much easier to resolve problems entire infrastructure when you have to start results of integrated systems management? if you can integrate the systems manage- with different components, interfaces, man- Grieser: You need to be able to see business ment and support functions in this way.  agement agents, philosophies, and so forth metrics in addition to IT metrics so you can and then pool it all into a common frame- relate what’s going on in the infrastructure David Baum ([email protected]) is work or manually combine the information. to the actual response time users experi- a freelance business writer based in Santa Having a preintegrated toolset with common ence. That means having a set of systems Barbara, California. interfaces and common views saves the IT management tools that monitors the entire organization the time and expense of making IT environment from the disk drive all the IDC (idc.com) is a global provider of market the tools work together. way up to the user interface, sometimes intelligence, advisory services, and events for Oracle Magazine: What are the key goals called “application-to-disk management.” the information technology, telecommunications, and challenges in enterprisewide systems The objective is to understand not just the and consumer technology markets. monitoring? technical transactions that are going on but Grieser: It’s important to have an end-to-end also the service levels that people are getting. Next Steps picture of the IT infrastructure in order to Isolated IT metrics don’t really tell you much make sure that end users are receiving the about the overall health of an application LEARN more about integrated systems management and support overall services they need. But doing this reli- or the business impact of certain problems. bit.ly/cnc7yX ably becomes more difficult as information If the IT staff can’t judge performance and

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