Time to change? XMLP, Release 12 and Oracle Reports

I recently blogged about XML Publisher (XMLP) and it's comparison with Oracle Reports. With Oracle eBusiness Suite Release 12 now up and running, I have seen the following:

• ~875 templates across 63 eBusiness products
• A Oracle internal migration project is in progress to convert Oracle Reports based concurrent programs to XMLP
• Slated for release later this year, this will mean 2000 templates available
• In Release 12 - XMLP 5.6.3 there is a set of libraries to help move your custom Oracle Reports to data and layout templates
• Hint of a Template Bank on Metalink to download delivered templates

So where does that leave you? As I mentioned in my prior post, new reports should be developed using XMLP - however consider the limitations of your installed XMLP version, or consider upgrading to 5.6.3, either of which may mean sticking with Oracle Reports now. Given the conversion libraries changing to XMLP in the future should be trivial. In the meantime, get on the template swapping bus and email some of you funky examples!

Firefox vs Internet Explorer, eBusiness and Key Shortcuts

Some time late last year I took the plunge and "upgraded" from Internet Explorer to Firefox as my primary browser. I guess it took me longer than many because for so long Oracle eBusiness Suite was inherently tied to Internet Explorer. However, that happy union has been consigned to history, and now things have taken a major turn for the better.

A couple of the components I find absolutely essential are Firebug, Adblock with Adblock Filters and the built in RSS reader.

I've also been using a bunch of the key shortcuts in Firefox and I thought I'd note them down here for easy reference. Very handy whether I'm in surfing mode - left thumb on left alt, right hand on arrow keys or developer mode - home row position.

Ctrl + T Opens a new tab, and places focus in the location bar.

Ctrl + W Close the current tab.

Alt + D or Ctrl + L or F6 Go to the location bar, highlight the current address for overwrite.

Ctrl + K Go to the search bar, highlight the current search for overwrite.

Ctrl + Tab / Ctrl + Shift + Tab or Ctrl PgUp / Ctrl PgDn Cycles through the open tabs forward or backward.

Ctrl + plus / Ctrl + minus Scales text size up and down.

Ctrl + Numpad 0 "zero" Resets text size back to default.

Ctrl + Shift + C Opens/closes Firebug – gotta have for debugging CSS etc.

Ctrl + U View source.

Alt + LeftArrow Alternative to the Back button

Ctrl + Enter In address bar adds "http://www." To front and ".com" to end of what you entered.

Ctrl + Tab / Ctrl + Shift + Tab or Ctrl PgUp / Ctrl PgDn Cycles through the open tabs forward or backward

Ctrl + plus / Ctrl + minus Scales text size up and down.

Ctrl + Numpad 0 "zero" Resets text size back to default.

Ctrl + Shift + C Opens/closes Firebug – gotta have for debugging CSS etc.

Ctrl + U View source.

Alt + Left Arrow Alternative to the Back button.

Ctrl + Enter In address bar adds "http://www." To front and ".com" to end of what you entered.

Apparently there is a KeyConfig Extension that allows you to customize your keystrokes.

Also see Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts Wiki.

Open Source vs Free: SugarCRM

I found a nice diagram on this page yesterday at SugarCRM. In summary it suggested:

• 1st generation CRM = Proprietary On Premise, Client/Server, ~ to 2001
• 2nd generation CRM = Proprietary On Demand, Hosted, ~ 2002 - 2006
• 3rd generation CRM = Open Source, On Demand / On Premise Appliance ~2007 +

I like this concept. It means for those of us at the lower end of the food chain we can take a look inside the big fish and learn something. And we get to use some cool stuff with a minimum of outlay.

However, the "open source" bit does not equal "free". In the IT world "free" does not exist. You gotta pay your ticket to get to the "free" bit.

Moreover, big business is not in the market for free software - they aren't buying the software, they're buying process, support, and someone to sue if the toys end up on the floor by the cot.

Nice if your supplying the big business... not so nice if you're funding it.

Bring on the Information Age!

I've recently been dabbling with a variety of concepts and IT ideals - Web 2.0, Web Standards, XML, SaaS etc. and today while reading an Patrick Wolf's APEX blog I found my way to the Yahoo Pipes site. From a very quick glance, this site embodies the real sort of power some of the advances in web technologies provide. The featured pipe at the time was Apartment Near Something, attractive given my kiwi-driven occasional interest in property investment although unusable given my New Zealand location! From my perspective this sort of thing is getting closer to my real world expectation of the "Information Age".  I remember reading an opinion recently that after the stockmarket tech bubble and crash we have moved from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, but I don't think we're quite there yet ... getting closer though especially if when enabling technologies such as these become common.

Need to customize Oracle eBusiness Suite release 12 frameworks?

If you've got your Release 12 environment up and running already, there's some good news to boot:

Oracle JDeveloper 10g with OA Extension (Patch 5856648) is available on Oracle MetaLink.

Also see Metalink Note 391554.1  Oracle Application Framework Documentation Resources, Release 12

And while you're at it checkout the Apps framework forum on Oracle Technology Network OA Framework Forum

Let me know if you got some sexy stuff happening with Framework customizations!

Blogging via Email

Given the pressures we all have on our time, its often tough to use products and services to their maximum advantages. I thought I'd try out the blogging via email option at blogger.com and see what it looks like on the other end!

Oracle eBusiness Suite release 12 available

Good to see Oracle a few days ahead of the release launch and Steven Chan keeping his blog current! Oracle eBusiness Suite Release 12 Available Looking forward to seeing it in action!

Do you have an IP addressed assigned?

In one of my earlier posts, I rehashed a couple of terms that I'd heard at a recent event Digital Immigrant vs Digital Native. After having a conversion with one of my colleagues about the expansion of phone numbers due to the increase in VoIP technology, and the limits in the range of IP Address, we came to the conclusion that there will be a way to determine whether one is a Digital Immigrant or Native: Digital Natives will have an "IP address" assigned to them at birth! With the advent and intersection of mobile devices, GPS, Google Maps and the inevitable tracking application that ensues, will we be referring to the flashing little red dot friends on our mobile device screens as Jane Doe or 141.146.8.66.x? Food for thought.

XML Publisher: Aargh! Another reporting tool for Oracle Apps

There is alot of hype and expectation being generated around Oracle XML Publisher and the use of it within the Oracle eBusiness Suite (Oracle Applications).

Having developed a number of reports with it specifically for Customer facing documentation, I can safely say some of this hype is deserved. The major benefit of the product from my perspective is the separation of the data and presentation.

Combine this with the ability to take an Oracle Reports report, switch it into XML mode without change, and feed the output into Oracle XML Publisher an you have a very attractive package. Of course, the ability to output the given data into a variety of formats is also immensely beneficial. This has long been a drawback of concurrent manager based Oracle Applications reports and so the ability to output a report to Microsoft Word, Excel, PDF is also excellent.

However, at the end of the day it is just another reporting tool. It has its quirkiness, limitations and suitability for given scenarios.

Some of the considerations having used the product are:

• Its position relative to Oracle Reports. Oracle Reports is a very powerful and mature product. There is a huge amount of functionality and capabilty built into Oracle Reports that either does not exist in XML Publisher or cannot be done in XML Publisher. As time goes by this gap may diminish, but like the old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", I wouldn't go coverting Oracle Reports to XML Publisher unless there is a very specific business need to do so. Primarily this would be when the User base need to define their own layouts based on a known dataset.
• Data Model Knowledge. The major obstacle with developing reports for Oracle Applications / Oracle eBusiness Suite is the fact that the data model is hugely complex and lacking in constraints - primary, foreign keys etc to guide the uninitiated. Oracle XML Publisher doesn't solve the issues around this and currently doesn't provide anything like the End User Layer (EUL) meta-data of Oracle Discoverer. I'm keen to put some effort into this arena, so watch this space AppsReports.
• Robustness given its time in the market. As with all things software, market maturity is something that takes time. I must say that for something I used the first time a number of months ago, it worked very well and I had few problems I couldn't overcome with a bit of delving into related issues, plus a heap of trial and error.
• Versions and Features. My first few experiences were with Oracle XML Publisher version 5.0 where the feature list was relatively small compared to the latest releases. Within the context of Oracle Applications, many companies are "patch adverse" meaning regular software updates to technology stack components are minimised. So my advice would be get the latest available certified version for XML Publisher and apply the patch before you start your foray into XML Publisher. Check out Certify on Metalink
• Watch your file size. Almost all standard Oracle Applications reports are character based, and usually use up a heap of trees. If you take a character report and add high definition layout objects, the filesize will blow out. I had an RTF template given to me to use as a basis that had equivalent of a 5Mb company logo in it. Doh! Of course hardware is cheap, but the impact must be taken into account for things such as this, and developers beware.

More and more I am finding that the work required to develop customizations to, and maintain Oracle Applications is decreasing. The right decisions on tools and design make a huge difference in cost, quality and time to implement. New features such as Oracle XML Publisher, Forms Personalizations and the like need to be utilized wherever possible.

If you are wondering about the various reporting tools, what is best in a given situation, and how you can enhance the level of reporting in your enterprise, visit our Virtuate or AppsReports websites or drop me an email.

We have experience reporting with Oracle Developer(Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports), Oracle Discoverer, Oracle XML Publisher, Financial Statement Generator FSGs, Oracle Application Express (APEX) / HTML DB, Noetix, Oracle Application Desktop Integrator (ADI) amongst others.

Bananas and Requirements Specification

During a stressful week I recently discovered a new way for me to work out what day of the week it is. At the start of each week I bring in 5 bananas to eat for breakfast, one for each day of the week. So I can work out what day it is based on how many bananas there are left on my desk, ie: 4 = Monday 3 = Tuesday 2 = Wednesday 1 = Thursday 0 = Friday So let's call this Gareth's Banana Calendar. That got me thinking about something in some text I was researching at the time. In the text, the author kept commenting in his text about how "the perceptive reader would notice x,y,z" based on details he just wrote. And that got me thinking how there is a very strong relation to this and how Software Developers interpret requirements, that is in order to get the rules right they need to interpret the business rules presented to them. However the perceptive developer will not only take the rules strictly, but also apply considerations to the rules, and if there is something they consider relevant that would brake or change the rules, then they should probe further for more detailed requirements or try it out. So the perceptive developer would realize there are a number of shortcomings to consider about Gareth's Banana Rule and seek answers. E.g. How do you work out what day it is if there is a public holiday during the week? Keen to hear what anyone else thinks about Gareth's Banana Rule ;-)