OpenWorld 2008 Final Post: Fusion Applications, X, R12 - Change Pack & Payment Manager plus SES

A bit of a delay on my final post on OpenWorld - Wednesday, the Appreciation Event and Thursday went past in a blur, then on to enjoying the final moments in the Valley, lastly the long haul home & back to reality.

Fusion Applications came to the fore at Steve Miranda's presentation on Wednesday the highlights for me were as follows - let me know if my scrawls have been translated to something incorrect!

• Built on ADF stack - I went to a few hands on sessions prior so familiar with the look n feel. Nice.
• WebCenter Integration
• Document Management (Stellant?) Integration
• Secure Enterprise Search (SES) standard (top and center in the UI)
• BI Publisher in the technology stack
• Prebuilt Dashboards and Embedded BI
• Tagging / Categories
• RSS
• Instant Collaboration built in - Chat / IM / Voice / Email
• Help includes User Ratings, Audio/Video
• Configuration comparison and loading tools across instances
• Upgrades as per provided today - ie. If you can upgrade your eBusiness Suite, then the same will apply to upgrade to Fusion. Note upgrade paths do not including merging instances, splitting instances. Supports Pillars.

But when are Fusion Applications going to be available? Let me know! Although given the fullness of the demo screens and a couple of mumbles I'd bet there are business trialling it now.

Following on from that the next interesting item was Larry's speech from the blogger's area and that box with the X and Oracle/HP badges; the HP Oracle Database Machine. Unfortunately my sentiment on this is similar to Tim Hall's - in New Zealand there might be 2 perhaps 3 companies with the kind of dosh needed to shell out and buy one... sigh ... but hey, prove me wrong someone in NZ and get me in to have a little play ;-)

After a highly enjoyable and entertaining night at the Appreciation Event, amusements, Seal and UB40 (thanks Greg, Michael & co) Thursday came around all to quick for me and my new Unicorn friend ;-) so skipped a few sessions, and headed to the demo grounds, notes follow.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Change Pack for Release 12.x

The "Change Pack" was very briefly mentioned during the R12 and 12.1 update without details. So I got down to the demo pod to check it out. Had a succinct demo from one of the On Demand team who are currently using it. With my Apps DBA hat on the the Change Pack looks really, really good and here's a rundown of the features:

• Automation of Patch Application, including automatic downloads, unzip and merge of designated patches. Basically you specify the patches you want applied and it comes up with a task list based on the patches where you can add/reorder etc. the steps.
• Creation of custom steps to integrate into a given patch run
• Patch run scheduling, including viewing status of other patch runs
• Automated notification of patch failures
• Post install tasks like Generate Messages, Compile etc just a checkbox
• Creation of Custom Patches that can be applied by adpatch

Note that unfortunately the features don't include patch analysis or automated dependency checking based on the underlying patch Metalink Notes... or should I call them Knowledge Base Notes now? It would be great if the Metalink Notes for Patches were in a strict format so the Change Pack could datamine them and work out patch dependencies etc. Hoping for too much ;-) Of course all features mentioned here are not official yet as Change Pack is due for release sometime in 2009 I think. Bring it on!

Release 12 Payment Manager was the next demo pod, the updates to Payment Batch process from Release 11i and earlier is something I've been looking forward to for a loooong time ... even though parts of it such as easy payment document changes via BI Publisher Templates and built in FTP/SFTP etc delivery are going to negate the need for some of my development time! Good stuff.

The Secure Enterprise Search (SES) for Release 12 demo pod also caught my attention, so took a brief flight through that - seems like it would take quite a bit of configuration to get it working, and more than a few $$ as well, with the need of the SES server and the eBusiness Suite "adaptors". But worth a look all the same ... now where did I put that Google Desktop Search for eBusiness Suite functionality ;-)

Eye Scanning: One of the more fun pods was focussed on UI design by tracking and recording eye movements - so I sat down and after a quick callibration exercise and intro, I went through an eye tracking session. Very very interesting to see where I looked when reading and searching for something on screen. Worth the time - glad the 50K price of the hardware isn't coming out of my budget though!

Well, that wraps up my first OpenWorld. The highlight for me was meeting all the people face to face that I've interacted with or heard about online - the stars from Oracle Forums, Bloggers, Oracle Staff (especially those Product Managers ;-), various NZers/Australians and a bunch of other great people. Good to hang out and catch up at the OTN Lounge, and events like the Bloggers Meetup, OTN Night and APEX Meetup. Hope to hear from you all soon!

Openworld Update: XML/BI Publisher & R12, 11g PL/SQL, ADFdi and more

A few updates on BI Publisher and a couple of interesting notes through the OpenWorld sessions that I attended over the last day or so.

BI Publisher:

• eBusiness Suite Release 12.1 - All standard reports to have Templates (Data still generated in Reports)
• Excel Templates for FSGs from EBS Release 12.0 (currently controlled release)
• DataTemplate Builder coming... still.
• ... did I miss anything? I was hoping for a little more, but beggars can't be choosers, even in San Francisco ;-)

Other Interesting Stuff:

Attended a couple of top sessions today, first was Steven Feuerstein's 11g PL/SQL session on making the most of the Function Result Cache - an important feature in my mind similar in nature to prior PL/SQL performance enhancing features like bulk binding that developers neglect somewhat. Although with its conflict with authid current_user and my focus on the EBS I'm going to have to do some digging to see if its usable with the EBS (apparently not at first glance).

Second was Juan Ruiz's MS Office Front Ends for ADF, where he demo'd upcoming (Q1 2009?) Desktop Integration components for ADF - very sexy stuff, ADF components built into Microsoft Excel 2007 with http/https communication through to backend ADF based model. In the world I live in the solution will definitely gain some traction. A bit of a shame its not here today although there are people/products achieving the same via varying means - a few of them in the audience including a couple of Kiwis (a.k.a. New Zealanders) - nice to see.

The Fusion Applications scene is very hush hush, some rumours around but unfortunately nothing of public attention - Oracle people keeping everything under wraps.

PS. Trying to keep these posts short and to the point given the heap of posts on OpenWorld around.

OpenWorld Keynote Announcements: R12.1, Beehive, DB 11.1.0.7, Jdeveloper 11g, My Oracle Support

Update: Removed GA of 12.1, due later!

A quick wrapup of the announcements of interest to me from the OpenWorld keynotes this morning:

From OpenWorld Keynote: Charles Phillips and Chuck Rozwat

• Oracle eBusiness Suite Release 12.1 General Availability (GA) available soon (perhaps the new year)
• Oracle Beehive: a suite of collaboration tools including MS Outlook integration
• Oracle JDeveloper Release 11g GA
• Oracle Database Release 11.1.0.7
• My Oracle Support: replacement for Oracle Metalink

From Oracle Develop: Ted Farrell

• Oracle JDeveloper Release 11g GA
• Oracle ADF 11g GA including 130+ JSF components (next week)
• Oracle Toplink 11g GA
• Oracle Enterprise Eclipse Pack focus

So that wraps up the biggest announcments so far. I was expecting R12.1 and JDev 11g, will be very interesting to follow the progress of Beehive and whether it can gain a footing against other specialist collaboration tools.

Update: Still awaiting details of the major database announcement later in the week... rumours are Database Accelerator... still guessing!

Oracle OpenWorld 2008: From Silicon Welly to Silicon Valley

Shortly off to OpenWorld. Sooo much to do, so little time.

Below are the sessions I'm lining up - also planning to head to the Blogger's Meetup on Sunday night (my apologies for the Australia/New Zealand dinner) and the OTN night Monday night amongst other things - so hope to see some of you there. Drop me a line if you want to catch up.

ID	DATE	TIME	TITLE
S299504	21-Sep-08	11:45	Build the Next Generation of Composite Applications with Oracle WebCenter, SOA, and Enterprise 2.0
S299048	21-Sep-08	13:15	Hands-on Lab: Adapters for Service-Oriented Architectures
S300199	21-Sep-08	14:30	Oracle JDeveloper with Oracle Application Development Framework and Oracle Fusion Stack: Is It Oracle Forms Developer Yet
S298690	21-Sep-08	15:45	Oracle ADF Faces Rich Client Components: Ajax and Web 2.0 with JavaServer Faces
S299488	22-Sep-08	11:30	Road Map for Oracle Fusion Middleware Application Server Infrastructure
S300603	22-Sep-08	13:00	Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Automation: Bursting and Document Delivery in Oracle E-Business Suite
S300595	22-Sep-08	14:30	Oracle PartnerNetwork: Taking Advantage of Oracle's Acquisition Strategy to Grow Your Business
S298724	22-Sep-08	16:00	Redeveloping an Oracle Forms Application with Oracle Application Development Framework: A Case Study
S298463	22-Sep-08	17:30	What's New with Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher: The Standard Reporting Platform for All Applications
S299928	23-Sep-08	9:00	Best Practices for Deploying Oracle Software and Linux: Oracle Validated Configurations and Preconfigured Templates
S298688	23-Sep-08	13:00	Oracle Application Development Framework 11g: New Declarative Validation, List of Values, Search, and Services Features
S298715	23-Sep-08	16:00	MS Office Front Ends for Oracle Application Development Framework Applications: Intro to Oracle ADF Desktop Integration
S299306	23-Sep-08	17:30	Zero-Cost Business Intelligence Using Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Application Express 3.1
S301712	24-Sep-08	9:00	Successfully Developing and Integrating Applications in Oracle Application Express in Oracle E-Business Suite
S298467	24-Sep-08	11:30	Oracle Fusion Applications: Applications for the Next-Generation Organization, Part 1
S299588	24-Sep-08	13:00	Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Road Map and Planned Features
S300478	25-Sep-08	9:00	Choose Your Weapon: An Overview of Oracle Development Tools
S299685	25-Sep-08	10:30	Bridging the Oracle Applications Unlimited/Oracle Fusion Applications Gap with Oracle Application Integration Architecture
S299692	25-Sep-08	15:00	Oracle Application Integration Architecture for Oracle E-Business Suite

And in the Demo Grounds:

Application UI Research and Innovation (Pod I11)

SOA Enablement of E-Business Suite (Pod K24)

Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (Pod K26)

Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher for Oracle Applications (Pod I01)

Don't forget the Lounges:

Applications Lounge Moscone West, Lobby Level 2	Monday, September 22 - Wednesday, September 24: 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Thursday, September 25: 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Database Lounge Moscone South Esplanade	Monday, September 22 - Wednesday, September 24: 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Thursday, September 25: 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Middleware Lounge San Francisco Marriott, Yerba Buena Ballroom Foyer	Sunday, September 21: 12:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Monday, September 22 - Wednesday, September 24: 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Thursday, September 25: 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Would have been nice to maket these as well, but hey - don't know of anyone with clones yet ;-)

S299504	21-Sep-08	11:45	Build the Next Generation of Composite Applications with Oracle WebCenter, SOA, and Enterprise 2.0
S299048	21-Sep-08	13:15	Hands-on Lab: Adapters for Service-Oriented Architectures
S300199	21-Sep-08	14:30	Oracle JDeveloper with Oracle Application Development Framework and Oracle Fusion Stack: Is It Oracle Forms Developer Yet?
S298690	21-Sep-08	15:45	Oracle ADF Faces Rich Client Components: Ajax and Web 2.0 with JavaServer Faces
S299488	22-Sep-08	11:30	Road Map for Oracle Fusion Middleware Application Server Infrastructure
S300603	22-Sep-08	13:00	Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Automation: Bursting and Document Delivery in Oracle E-Business Suite
S300595	22-Sep-08	14:30	Oracle PartnerNetwork: Taking Advantage of Oracle’s Acquisition Strategy to Grow Your Business
S298724	22-Sep-08	16:00	Redeveloping an Oracle Forms Application with Oracle Application Development Framework: A Case Study
S298463	22-Sep-08	17:30	Whats New with Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher: The Standard Reporting Platform for All Applications
S299928	23-Sep-08	9:00	Best Practices for Deploying Oracle Software and Linux: Oracle Validated Configurations and Preconfigured Templates
S298688	23-Sep-08	13:00	Oracle Application Development Framework 11g: New Declarative Validation, List of Values, Search, and Services Features
S298715	23-Sep-08	16:00	MS Office Front Ends for Oracle Application Development Framework Applications: Intro to Oracle ADF Desktop Integration
S299306	23-Sep-08	17:30	Zero-Cost Business Intelligence Using Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Application Express 3.1
S301712	24-Sep-08	9:00	Successfully Developing and Integrating Applications in Oracle Application Express in Oracle E-Business Suite
S298467	24-Sep-08	11:30	Oracle Fusion Applications: Applications for the Next-Generation Organization, Part 1
S299588	24-Sep-08	13:00	Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Road Map and Planned Features
S300478	25-Sep-08	9:00	Choose Your Weapon: An Overview of Oracle Development Tools
S299685	25-Sep-08	10:30	Oracle Application Integration Architecture: Bridging The Gap To Next Generation Applications
S298403	25-Sep-08	13:30	Opening Up Oracle Application Framework Applications Through Web Services and Portlets
S299692	25-Sep-08	15:00	Oracle Application Integration Architecture for Oracle E-Business Suite

All systems go!

Oracle APEX, SEO and Google

One of my major gripes with Oracle APEX is / was its lack of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) friendliness. At least of couple of us down under have almost pulled out our hair trying to get APEX to play nicely with Google, lynx, Apache rewrite etc. without much success. A couple of references here and here (thanks Steve).

Well, the good news is that a "session 0" fix and the related URL redirect issue look to be resolved in APEX 3.1.2 (patch 7313609) recently released, expertly covered by John Scott here , glad that it got your attention John! So that should really help with Google's crawlers and raise the profile of APEX sites using session 0.

Top 7 Reasons for a FREE version of BI Publisher a.k.a Uncage Oracle XML Publisher

I'd like to see a "free" (as in beer) version of BI Publisher (XML Publisher) added to the list of "free" Oracle products. Here are my reasons:

1. BI Publisher for everyone.

BI Publisher is fundamentally such a fantastic product that every organization and developer should benefit from it.

2. Remove the quirks.

The accelerated uptake from the "free" version would (hopefully) translate to the quirks of the product being identified and fixed in fraction of the time it would take for a paid expensive product.

3. Ease the expense.

BI Publisher bundled up in a package costing large $$$? I have trouble driving Oracle's online store at the best of times, and I can't find "BI Publisher Standalone" on its own - only bundled with other stuff I don't need or want, yet ;-) Try searching on "Publisher". Now making a free version would solve this problem - no license to find and buy!

4. It needs other technology to lean on.

In a similar nature to a plugin, BI Publisher doesn't stand on its own feet. Like APEX (needing the Oracle RDBMS) and JDeveloper (an IDE) it needs either someone to feed it or something else to connect to. If there is a free version its more likely that the other thing will be Oracle. Update: This point has been updated from the original post to clarify my use of "plugin".

5. It's a killer combo with APEX and XE.

The other "free" products - APEX and XE are natural integration partners with BI Publisher and the resulting combination is a awesome one. I see a number of people wanting this integration - but without the cost.

6. Raise visibility.

Although its been around for a number of years in various forms, the product on its own doesn't seem to be highly visible. Or is that just because of the quirks?! Making it free would bring visibility to new levels.

7. Beat the competition

Various other competitors exist, both in free and paid form. Making at least an entry level version of BI Publisher free would make it a viable competitor, and ensure Oracle customers lock into Oracle products taking out the chance of a competitors plugin being used.

8. Create Leads for Oracle

Oracle would benefit by having a greater stream of leads and support revenue.

Oops, that's 8, oh well, luckier than 7 for some ;-)

Post your support here!

NZOUG Conference 2008: Early Bird Closing extended! Win an iPod Touch

An announcement for those readers on the conference trail to New Zealand in October:

Join me at the NZOUG Conference 2008 October 20/21 in Rotorua and go in the draw for an iPod Touch! Early Bird registrations have been extended and will close on Monday 8 September, so register now and be in the draw to win!

Details at: http://nzoug.org/ipod08

PS. I'm on the NZOUG Committee and will be at the conference hence the shameless plug for this event ;-)

PPS. If you have any sessions/questions/design issues or ideas bring them along or let me know and I can tee up a special slot for you!

XML / BI Publisher concurrent request fails with no error message? Check Output Post Processor (OPP) logfile for errors like: invalid char in text

So your Oracle Reports based concurrent request completed with warning and your concurrent request log file looks like this:

+------------- 1) PUBLISH -------------+
Beginning post-processing of request 1294502 on node XXXX01 at 02-SEP-2008 12:53:28.
Post-processing of request 1294502 failed at 02-SEP-2008 12:53:33 with the error message:
One or more post-processing actions failed. Consult the OPP service log for details.
+--------------------------------------+

And if you go to System Administrator, Concurrent > Manager > Administer, Query up "Output Post Processor", click on Processes, View Manager Log, you see something like:

[9/2/08 10:44:34 AM] [198325:RT1294354]
Template code: XXGLXXXX
Template app:  XXV8
Language:      en
Territory:     US
Output type:   EXCEL
[9/2/08 10:44:49 AM] [UNEXPECTED] [198325:RT1294354] java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.common.xml.XSLT10gR1.invokeParse(XSLT10gR1.java:517)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.common.xml.XSLT10gR1.transform(XSLT10gR1.java:224)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.common.xml.XSLTWrapper.transform(XSLTWrapper.java:177)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.template.fo.util.FOUtility.generateFO(FOUtility.java:1044)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.template.fo.util.FOUtility.generateFO(FOUtility.java:997)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.template.fo.util.FOUtility.generateFO(FOUtility.java:212)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.template.FOProcessor.createFO(FOProcessor.java:1657)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.template.FOProcessor.generate(FOProcessor.java:967)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.oa.schema.server.TemplateHelper.runProcessTemplate(TemplateHelper.java:5888)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.oa.schema.server.TemplateHelper.processTemplate(TemplateHelper.java:3438)
 at oracle.apps.xdo.oa.schema.server.TemplateHelper.processTemplate(TemplateHelper.java:3527)
 at oracle.apps.fnd.cp.opp.XMLPublisherProcessor.process(XMLPublisherProcessor.java:247)
 at oracle.apps.fnd.cp.opp.OPPRequestThread.run(OPPRequestThread.java:157)
Caused by: oracle.xdo.parser.v2.XMLParseException: Invalid char in text.
 at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.XMLError.flushErrors1(XMLError.java:324)
 at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.NonValidatingParser.parseDocument(NonValidatingParser.java:290)
 at oracle.xdo.parser.v2.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:266)
 ... 17 more
[9/2/08 10:44:49 AM] [198325:RT1294354] Completed post-processing actions for request 1294354.

You look at your XML file via View Concurrent Requests, Diagnostics, View XML. Then how do you find the invalid character?

Try loading the XML Data in BI Publisher Desktop Word Plugin (Data > Load XML Data), and hopefully you'll see something like the following that gives the details of where the error is occurring (of course without the smudges ;-):

In this case the "invalid char" is indicated by the square box.

Throwing that into a hex editor (part of the highly recommended PSPad) we see character hex 05 followed by the two periods (hex 2E):

Looking at our ASCII table we see 05 is Enquiry - but this isn't a printing character and so will be causing the problem.

Okay, so now we know what's causing it, we can just update the data to remove the special character, and run the report again without hassles!

Or we could write a wrapper PL/SQL procedure to remove the control characters from the affected fields and add to the Report definition SQL.

Or those of you with more problems that just one occurrence of the control character could log an SR and see if something can be done other than that referred to in Note:155078.1!