Saturday, January 24, 2009

A Look Ahead to 2009 - Oracle eBusiness Suite and Happy New Year!

Flickr tanakawho - Lion Dance

Gong Xi Fa Cai
Happy Chinese New Year - for January the 26th!

2008 has been and gone, and we're well into 2009. Let's look at some of potential up and coming tidbits for the Oracle eBusiness Suite.

1. Release 12.1: I was expecting this late last year, but we saw 12.0.6 instead. Release 12.1 promises to deliver a number of things, the main one for me will be a whole swag of XML / BI Publisher layouts for standard reports. A couple of Metalink oops My Oracle Support Notes indicate R12.1 is in controlled release. Haven't had a chance to track down the patch number .. anyone have it? For documentation on R12.1 see the Release Content Documentation.

2. Patch 5612820 for EBS Release 11i: This minor piece of functionality to default the Layout Format for BI Publisher based concurrent requests has been nagging me. Its out for R12, and actually its already out for R11i (9-Jan-2009) however ... the Default Layout on the XMLP side is there but the critical concurrent processing portion to default the layout on a concurrent request was missing so its back with Development. I'll keep you posted.

3. Native Excel Templates for XML / BI Publisher: This one may be subtle but for me its a biggie. Release 12 FSGs with native Excel Templates I believe are in controlled release. RTF templates have their moments, but I know a number people are looking for Excel templates. Excel and Accounting live together, and its high time they were standard for XML Publisher with eBusiness Suite. Here's hoping for more than just FSG native Excel templates.

4. Further emergence of OBIA with EBS: I've spent quite a bit of time with the Business Intelligence products lately, and the Oracle Business Intelligence Applications (OBIA) stack is a formidible beast. Albeit complex, there is plenty of sense and underlying power. I think only a handful of people have tapped into this and I'm keen to see how it plays out this year.

5. Change Management Pack for the eBusiness Suite: I'll be watching this closely too - the important parts from my perspective will be automated patching, and the ability to cut your own custom patches for applying using adpatch - nice, but of course I'm assuming you'll need front up with a few $$ too. Watch this space.

6. New Oracle Application Express (APEX) listener: Apparently due in APEX v4, the new listener will hopefully once again push APEX squarely back into the realm of the EBS after mod_plsql's support was tragically cast aside, only to resurface after clarification from Oracle :-) Any update on this David?

7. Oracle Fusion Applications: I wasn't sure whether to put this in, but I think its worth a mention. Perhaps shouldn't include it here with the emphasis on 2009 as my gut feel is that we'll be waiting a tad longer than that. However, if you've heard anything let us know!

8. What's happening for me in 2009? Well, fingers crossed I'll get stuck into a couple of projects that should have seen the light in 2008!

Do you have any hopes/requests/tidbits for Oracle eBusiness Suite action in 2009? Post a comment.

What happened in 2008?

In my neck of the woods a whole lot went on in 2008 including Website launches, Virtuate contract wins, Product demos, a GreaseMonkey Script release, attending OpenWorld for the first time, joining the NZOUG committee and helping to organize the NZOUG Conference, a new phone (Nokia E71 - nice), a new laptop (Toshiba A300 Y01 running Vista 64 ouch) and a ton more. Despite the gloomy economic outlook I'm hugely looking forward to 2009, the year of the Ox.

Disclaimer: The words, ideas and opinions here are my own. Please don't assume they represent the opinion of any other person or organization.

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