Welcome to 5 Minute Briefing: Oracle an information resource prepared by Database Trends and Applications Magazine and published in cooperation with the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG). To subscribe, click here.

Oracle Announces New Release of Oracle Software Configuration Manager

Oracle has announced the next release of Oracle Software Configuration Manager, which collects and integrates system configuration information that helps Oracle to deliver automated and personalized support. It also integrates with related innovations that Oracle has introduced around personalized knowledge management, automated healthchecks, supportability and management tools, and improved dashboard reporting and information management.

Key enhancements in the new release are the improved service request process that reduces the service request log time by up to 30 percent and resolution time by up to 40 percent; improved knowledge management and guided search capabilities, that enable the customer to locate relevant knowledge articles and information quickly; and a change history capability that enables customers to track and manage their Oracle environments enabling more effective change management.

The March 2008 release of Software Configuration Manager provided a simpler way for customers to personalize and manage their Oracle support experience, and this latest release builds on that foundation to provide personalized and integrated service request and knowledge management capabilities to Oracle customers, said Juergen Rottler, executive vice president of Oracle Customer Services. "The streamlined service request process leverages configuration information provided by our customers to reduce the service request resolution time by up to 40 percent,” Rottler said. “Customers can also leverage Software Configuration Manager’s filtering and personalization capabilities to personalize their knowledge management views, based on previous activity, preferences or their configuration information.”

Oracle Software Configuration Manager is available with Oracle Premier Support at no additional cost for customers. For more on Oracle Software Configuration Manager, go here.

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SGI Unveils Adaptive Data Warehouse

SGI, a leader in high-performance computing, has unveiled SGI Adaptive Data Warehouse, a new solution optimized for Oracle data warehouses built specifically for what SGI is calling complex decision support environments. The new solution uses technology first developed to deliver the performance, scalability and reliability needed for such data-intensive fields as battlefield intelligence, energy exploration, and weather modeling and forecasting.

The complex data warehouse market represents an emerging set of customers that face the same sorts of challenges once reserved for the high performance computing (HPC) arena, Ken Woo, director of enterprise data management at SGI, told 5 Minute Briefing. Customers such as online merchants who handle high-volume transactions, organizations running sophisticated pattern recognition software to catch identity thieves, and manufacturers whose complex decision support needs range from sales analysis to supply chain management have the same technical challenges as HPC, he said.

The solution, launched as part of the Oracle Optimized Warehouse Initiative (OOWI), combines with Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) database technology with SGI Altix servers and SGI InfiniteStorage systems in a platform that scales to meet the needs of customers whose requirements extend beyond the capabilities of traditional enterprise computers. “OOWI is Oracle’s response to data warehouse appliances,” Woo noted. While appliances perform the tasks for which they are designed well, he added, this approach provides end-users with greater flexibility.

“You can support mixed workloads and complex queries, and change queries,” Woo noted. Moreover, he argued, data warehousing is not compute-intensive but needs good I/O. “Altix has great memory and bandwidth,” he said.

Capable of supporting data warehouses ranging from 5TB to more than 300TB, the SGI Adaptive Data Warehouse Solution allows organizations to conduct highly complex, ad hoc queries up to five times faster than competing platforms. SGI delivers the only Oracle data warehouse platform that allows customers to scale their I/O bandwidth to unmatched levels - without having to add unnecessary components. By leveraging the SGI Altix server architecture's ability to independently scale I/O, CPUs and memory, customers can create a data warehouse that expands efficiently and economically as their requirements demand. The SGI Adaptive Data Warehouse solution is available now. For more information, go here.

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New Composite Discovery Appliance Helps Enterprise Business Users Discover Information

Composite Software, a virtual data integration leader, has unveiled a new appliance called Composite Discovery which is intended to help non-technical business users who normally depend on IT teams to access data for analysis and decision-making. The Discovery appliance allows users to quickly “discover” the business-critical information they need, delivered with the relevant data relationships context, regardless of data source or location. 

Composite Discovery can be used as a stand-alone appliance, and, when integrated with the Composite Information Server, Composite Discovery leverages developed views and other virtual stores that abstract and federate complex data, including data from Oracle, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and salesforce.com using Composite Application Data Services.

According to Composite, enterprises have already invested millions of dollars in information repositories and business intelligence (BI) technology to deliver information in usable formats; yet IT teams using advanced technologies still struggle to keep pace with the demands made on them, while business users are often unable to access the information in a form that is useful to them.

“The idea here is that there is a certain amount of unanticipated requirements, new requirements, short- term requirements - that haven't really been addressed by IT with existing reporting and we can take care of a percentage of that work, freeing IT to work on the more long-term repeatable projects,” Robert Eve, vice president of marketing, Composite Software, told 5 Minute Briefing.

The solution leverages key elements of BI and enterprise search to help users easily get to and work with source data and intermediate stores such as warehouses and marts. Discovery provides visibility into the data without the time-intensive set-up traditionally involved, while enriching enterprise search with IP that delivers data relationship discovery.

Among Composite Discovery’s key features are search functionality for finding structured data; data relationship discovery that reveals relationships among the information contained in disparate sources and delivers this context with the data, so users can easily identify what’s relevant; drag and drop tools that make it easy to view and work with data in a familiar tabular format; high-performance query optimization and integration with Microsoft Excel to maximize the user experience; “recipes” for repeatable searches, as well as Enterprise 2.0 information support for greater collaboration and higher productivity; and a range of security options, including integration with LDAP and Active Directory to ensure compliance with IT data security and governance mandates.

Available now, Composite Discovery is sold as an appliance, including hardware and software, with two pricing models: perpetual use and monthly subscription. Support is included with both pricing models, said Eve. “Because it is an appliance we can automatically download all the patches and upgrades and improvements, so we really take a lot of the maintenance burden off of IT." For more details, go here.

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Texas Memory Systems’ Patent Enables High-Capacity Solid State Disk Systems

Texas Memory Systems yesterday announced that the company has been granted a patent for its Instant-On Input-Output (IO²) technology, which enables instant access to data from a RAM-based Solid State Disk (SSD) after a unit is powered-on. According to the vendor, without this technology a half-terabyte of data could take up to two hours to be available from SSD memory after a power outage.

“Although downtime for a RamSan SSD in a production environment is rare, it is a possibility, for example in the case of a planned shutdown,” said Woody Hutsell, executive vice president, Texas Memory Systems, at the time of the announcement. “Because Texas Memory Systems has been the SSD supplier of choice for mission-critical systems for nearly 30 years, we developed the IO² technology to address any potential loss of productivity caused by delayed data access during power up.”

IO² technology increases application availability by making mission-critical data instantly available to an application after a SSD is powered up.  A traditional SSD must wait for data to be entirely loaded from internal backup hard disk drives to the RAM storage area before the data is accessible.  For smaller SSDs, the loss in availability is small.  But without IO², large capacity SSDs are impractical as availability could be lost for up to two hours just to load data from disk to memory, according to the vendor.

Texas Memory Systems’ Instant-On Input-Output (IO²) technology, patent number 7,216,222 is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. IO² will be available as a licensable feature on upcoming RamSan SSDs. For more information, go here.

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• Building
  
• Installing
  
• Configuring
  
• Backup/recovery
  
• Performance tuning
  
• Networking
  
• Failover
  
• Load balancing
  
• Workload management

The hands-on lab, taking place both days, will focus on cluster installation prerequisites on Linux, installing Oracle clusterware, installing Oracle RDBMS, creating RAC databases (for beginners), failure testing and backup/recovery testing.

Register today for this event! And, stay tuned for more information, as speakers will be announced shortly.

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Submit Your Nomination for the 2008 Oracle Excellence Award

Oracle recently announced that it is accepting nominations for its 2008 Oracle Excellence Award. If you or someone you know is creatively using Oracle Fusion Middleware or BEA with Oracle Applications, such as Oracle’s E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards and vertical industry applications, submit a nomination for this award.

All nominations are due Friday, August 8. Submit yours today!

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IOUG Welcomes BEA Systems, Inc. to Oracle User Community

The IOUG welcomes Oracle’s new acquisition, BEA Systems, a leading provider of enterprise application infrastructure solutions, to the Global Oracle user community.This acquisition provides BEA customers the opportunity to access top-notch resources from organizations like IOUG. Therefore, the IOUG will be working closely with key leaders from the BEA community to ensure that it’s providing support and adding value to their organizations. Stay tuned for details!

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Mark Your Calendar for IOUG Regional Education

Take advantage of expert education from the IOUG in collaboration with local groups. Mark your calendar for these educational events:

• October 27, 2008 in partnership with Utah Oracle Users Group in Salt Lake City, UT
  
• November 6, 2008 in partnership with National Capitol Oracle Users Group in Reston, VA
  
• November 7, 2008 in partnership with Ohio Oracle Users Group in Dublin, OH
  
• November 14, 2008 in partnership with Dallas Oracle Users Group in Plano, TX
  
• March 2009 in partnership with Northern California Oracle Users Group

Continue to visit www.ioug.org for updated information on these events.

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There Has Never Been a More Exciting Time to be an IOUG Member!

The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), a membership organization comprised of more than 20,000 Oracle technology and database professionals, continues to enhance its member benefits. Now, you can take advantage of:

• Enhancement voting, where you can provide feedback directly to Oracle regarding pending enhancement requests on topics ranging from Application Express to PL/SQL to RAC.
  
• Fusion Middleware Portal, where you can obtain suggestions, tips and opinions based on real user experience from the site’s blogs, discussion forums, podcasts, an online repository and more.
  
• Oracle Professional Exchange Network (OPEN), a social networking tool that allows you to share information and best practices with Oracle users from across the globe via its wikis, discussion forums, Ask the Expert feature, and "Collaborator" tool.
  
• And much more!

Click here to join the IOUG today!

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Share Your Oracle Knowledge: Become an Author

Packt Publishing, a leading publisher of Oracle technology books, is looking for authors on various Oracle subjects. Become an author, or co-write with one of your colleagues, on one of the following titles:

• Getting Started with Oracle Warehouse Builder
  A step-by-step guide to creating and implementing your first data warehouse
  
  The target audience for this book is business analysts, database administrators and business intelligence developers, who have been handed their first Business Intelligence project and will be using Warehouse Builder to manage their data. This will be a beginner's tutorial (akin to a Dummy's Guide) that runs through the basics with real world examples.

Prerequisites: Experience in the basic use of Oracle RDBMS

• Oracle Warehouse Builder – An Administrator’s Handbook
  Managing fast, efficient, secure systems

The target audience for this book is database administrators. The title will be a handbook that covers the administration tasks that a DBA needs to master when using OWB. This includes: learning to configure and manage repositories, setting up backups and enabling recovery, managing security and maximizing system efficiency.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with Warehouse Builder and data warehousing

• Web 2.0 Solutions with Oracle WebCenter
  Developing real world enterprise applications in an online work environment

The target audience for this book is java developers with a focus on Web 2.0 development. The book will be a tutorial for developers, covering core techniques in putting together an enterprise application.

Prerequisites: Knowledge of JDeveloper and ADF Oracle Application Development Framework

• Expertise with the specific topic area of the book
  
• Proficiency in English
  
• Previous authoring experience is not necessary, but a plus
  

If you have questions or want more information about this opportunity please contact Sheila Cepero, Manager of Oracle Publishers Program, at sheila.cepero@oracle.com.

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Download the Latest Tools from Oracle

FREE: Oracle Application Express Resource Kit
Learn how Oracle Application Express (APEX) can help you address the manageability, security and scalability challenges associated with using spreadsheets and personal databases to store mission-critical data. Request your free Oracle Application Express Resource Kit containing the latest release of Oracle Application Express and a link to related free packaged applications, as well as analyst reports, white papers, and customer testimonials.

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• Notifications of exclusive offers, hot new downloads and upcoming live events
  
• Details of informational webcasts and on demand events featuring customer case studies, key industry experts and thought leaders as well as influential Oracle Executives
  
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Learn how Oracle gives you the power to grow by providing a scalable, easy-to-use platform for running your business at a price you can afford. Request your free copy of this DVD, containing Oracle Database 11g software, whitepapers, tutorials, etc.

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Founded in 1993, the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) (formerly International Oracle Users Group) is a user-driven membership organization for Oracle technology and database professionals serving more than 15,000 database administrators, developers, architects, technical managers and other Oracle professionals throughout North America and worldwide. The IOUG empowers its members and the broader Oracle community through their technical publication, SELECT Journal, Web site resources including more than 3000 papers, tips and articles and networking with other users through online discussion forums, Special Interest Groups and a network of regional Oracle user groups. For more information about the IOUG, please visit the IOUG Web site.

Database Trends and Applications, published by Unisphere Media, provides timely coverage of the technology and intelligence needed to conceptualize, plan, initiate, implement and manage large-scale integrated information projects. Unisphere Media also publishes 5 Minute Briefing: Data Integration, a summary of news, trends, and insights addressing crucial data integration challenges and 5 Minute Briefing: MultiValue, a review of news, technical tips and insights for the MultiValue database community. Visit our Web site here.

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