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.

Noetix Enhances NoetixViews with Features Supporting Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12

Noetix Corp., a software provider that automatically generates business intelligence content from enterprise applications, has introduced a new version of its flagship product, NoetixViews, with a host of features that includes support for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.

“It is all about reporting,” Paul Winterstein, director of product management, Noetix, told 5 Minute Briefing. “For most users of the E-Business Suite, they are not going to realize the return of that investment until they also have reporting in place. It is one thing to consolidate your customer information, the way that you manage your finances - and that is great at a transactional level,” said Winterstein. But, he noted, until users get insight into that data and get the reports out of the system, they don't really have everything they want yet. “It's very important, it's very hard; the Views make it easier,” he said.

Noetix is now shipping the following NoetixViews version 5.8 modules with support for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12: Oracle Assets, Oracle Benefits, Oracle Human Resources, Oracle General Ledger, Oracle Payables, Oracle Payroll, and Oracle Receivables. This required innovation to accommodate key changes from Oracle in Release 12, including the introduction of Oracle Subledger Accounting; Trading Community Architecture (TCA) expanded to now include bank and supplier information; Funds disbursement and supplier setup moving to the new Oracle Payments application; Bank setup moving to the Oracle Cash Management application; Collections and customer correspondence functionality moving to the Oracle Advanced Collections application; and Tax calculations introduced by the new Oracle E-Business Tax application.

The introduction of Oracle Subledger Accounting is “probably the most significant change for Oracle in Release 12,” observed Winterstein.“We have tackled that. We have got all the queries. We have got all the views. People can now go to Release 12 and not worry about reporting as it relates to Subledger Accounting because we have covered it with the Views.”

NoetixViews version 5.8 has been validated to work with Release 12, and will provide upgrade protection “for the vast majority” of existing customer reports and queries that use these views in an Oracle 11i environment, according to Noetix.

Also introduced in version 5.8 is NoetixViews Global Extension for Oracle Human Resources (HR). These global HR views enable both Oracle 11i and Release 12 users with multiple business groups, to access data from one, multiple, and all business groups in a single query. Noetix has enhanced support for native Oracle HR security while adding the capability for customers to create custom HR security policies for reporting.

A beta version of NoetixViews for Oracle Discrete Manufacturing, Order Management, Purchasing, Advanced Supply Chain Planning, Projects, and Grants with support for Release 12 will be available in Q2, 2008. This version will include support for the new Release 12 common Inventory application. The remainder of the NoetixViews modules, including those for Oracle Service and Process Manufacturing, will ship with support for Release 12 in Q3 later this year. Go here for more information.

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Oracle Builds Partner Ecosystem for Application Integration Environment

Since its release last year, Oracle has aggressively built the partner ecosystem around its Application Integration Architecture. “Our ISVs and SIs have been educated about AIA,” Jose Lazares, vice president of Oracle’s application development, told 5 Minute Briefing. “We have our proof points. The core foundation is out and our partners believe that they can add value.”

Oracle AIA delivers business process-based integrations across Oracle, third-party and custom applications. Oracle AIA provides pre-built, standards-based, sustainable integrations that connect applications together and can generate significant cost savings for customers. In addition to a collection of core integration objects and Web services, AIA includes best practices for application integration. The goal, Lazares said, “is to reduce the overall cost of integration and improve interoperability, not just for Oracle applications but all applications.”

Oracle has integrated several “front office,” most notably Siebel CRM on Demand, and “back office” applications itself using AIA. In addition, through the Oracle Application Integration Architecture for Partners program, qualified partners pre-build integrations to AIA standards. Oracle reviews and validates that the partner integration meets required standards. Oracle plans to work with partners to develop targeted, vertical integrations in which Oracle will own the intellectual property and the partner will take the solution to market. As a model, Oracle and Satyam Computer Services, Ltd., a global consulting and IT services provider, announced a co-development agreement to build Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Process Integration Packs for Enterprise Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). Satyam will collaborate with Oracle's application development teams to create an enterprise PLM integration solution between Oracle’s Agile PLM and Oracle E-Business Suite solutions.

Over the next year, in addition to new technology announcements, Oracle hopes to establish centers of excellence in three to five different industries to accelerate the use and deployment of the AIA framework, Lazares said. “It will be more industry-specific,” he said. For more information, go here.

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IRI Releases Test Data Software for Application Development

Innovative Routines International (IRI), developer of the CoSort data manipulation suite for open systems, has announced that it is now shipping RowGen Version 2, test data software for application development, load testing and outsourcing. RowGen eliminates the need for testing with real data, and overcomes traditional limits of low load volumes and inaccurate data. “We think we have the high end of test data,” David Friedland, vice president of business development, told 5 Minute Briefing. RowGen delivers high performance, high volume data.

RowGen V2 builds large test sets in production table and file structures by leveraging existing data models and metadata, sophisticated data generation and selection techniques, built-in data transformations, and custom formatting functions. “The DDL is compliant with every database,” he said. “We use the same engine as with CoSort.” RowGen V2 creates test data for Oracle, as well as other major relational databases including Sybase, SQL Server, Teradata, IBM DB2 UDB, and packaged applications such as PeopleSoft, and Informatica. It also creates test data for interdependent flat files.

According to Friedland, there are many drivers for the need for test data for application development independent of actual production data. Often, Friedland noted, compliance issues preclude the use of production data for testing and development. Moreover, using production data can have an impact on performance, he added.

Using GUI or 4GL front-ends, RowGen users can customize and transform their test files to reflect their business rules and production report formats. For audit purposes, RowGen creates XML job logs that help companies comply with GLBA and HIPAA requirements in testing environments. The RowGen test data definition file (.DDF) format is supported by the Meta Integration Model Bridge, which automatically converts third-party metadata for use in RowGen, allowing BI, ERP, ETL and data modeling users to generate accurate test data for their applications. “We think this will be a core product for use,” Friedland said. For more information, go here.

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NEON Enterprise Software Unveils Database Archiving Solution

NEON Enterprise Software, a technology leader in enterprise data management software and services, has introduced TITAN Archive for Oracle. TITAN Archive is a database archiving solution that supports companies’ data retention policies and enables the long-term retention of structured data such as business transactions. TITAN Archive ensures that structured data can be easily stored for its business or legal life through a secure, sustainable architecture that reduces costs and meets the compliance and legal requirements for retaining data.

“TITAN Archive for Oracle extends the product family. TITAN Archive for DB2 has been in the market for some time now,” Dave Moore, product author at NEON Enterprise Software, told 5 Minute Briefing. “It's a way for customers to take data out of their transactional databases and put it in a true data archive where they can store it,” he explained. “The archive is a read-only data store that is secure, it's encrypted and customers can access that data that they no longer need online and very quick response times with - and as a result their operational databases in DB2 or Oracle operate much more efficiently because we're dealing with reduced working set.”

With this solution in place, archived data is protected for the life of its retention period, no matter how long, in its authentic format, according to the vendor. TITAN Archive also reduces risk by ensuring archived data, which is tagged and stored with metadata, can be easily retrieved in a meaningful context, through standard queries.

TITAN Archive provides a policy-driven solution for archiving critical structured data such as financial data, invoices, and other business transactions and reducing the volume of data that must be maintained in expensive operational databases.  Because of the data security and protection TITAN Archive provides, it helps companies remain compliant with industry and government regulations. TITAN Archive indexes all archived database records, making them easy to search and retrieve specific records when they are needed for litigation. Additionally, TITAN Archive's discard policy ensures that data is deleted at the end of its legal life.   

NEON Enterprise Software also plans to release TITAN Archive for IMS. “I haven't been in too many shops where they have only one database employed. It is usually multiple and sometimes a handful,” Moore observed. For more information about NEON Enterprise Software, visit here.

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Oracle Database Remains Market Leader

The Oracle Database continues to hold the overwhelming dominant position in the relational database market, according to IDC’s recently released "Worldwide RDBMS 2007 Vendor Shares" report. IDC estimates that the Oracle Database commands 44.1 percent of the market, up from 43.7 percent last year and more than twice the share of its leading competitor, IBM, which is estimated to have 21.3 percent of the market. IDC believes that the sales of the Oracle Database grew about 13 percent, slightly faster than the overall growth in the RDBMS market, which IDB projects at 12.7 percent. The news was not so good for Microsoft. Its market share dropped from 18.4 percent to 18.3 percent, and at 11.2 percent, its share is growing more slowly than the overall market. Unisphere Research, our research arm, conducts proprietary studies of IT trends. To read abstracts of these studies, go here. Are you interested in having proprietary research conducted for your company about issues of concern to you? For more information, send an email to Tom@dbta.com.

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The Platform as a Service

At this point, there can be no question that Larry Ellison was the first to understand that changes in middleware made the idea of software consolidation feasible. The massive integration of different technologies was no longer necessary. Legacy applications could continue to develop along side new, converged applications. Oracle has clearly benefited from that insight. But what comes next? Some people, okay, Salesforce.com, is pushing the idea of the platform as a service - companies will develop applications that run in an accessible data cloud provided by Amazon, or Google, or, okay, Salesforce. Several start-up companies are pushing the concept, which certainly seems to hold many intriguing possibilities. To follow trends in the industry, read the e-edition of Database Trends and Applications magazine here.

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COLLABORATE 08 – IOUG Forum Was a Success!

With more than 7,500 attendees from across the globe, insights from numerous Oracle executives, hundreds of educational sessions, top IT Solution Providers and various networking opportunities, COLLABORATE 08 was truly a success. Click here to view the conference pictures, as well as video footage of the Opening General Session, for a recap of the conference.

If you attended the conference, you can access the IOUG Online Proceedings to view the papers and presentations of various IOUG Forum sessions. Attendees should have received an e-mail, providing a login and password for accessing the Proceedings. If you did not, please e-mail IOUG@ioug.org.

If you did not attend the conference but are an IOUG member, make sure you check out the Library of Oracle Knowledge (LoOK) in the upcoming months, as proceedings will be available for purchase at that time.

And, make sure you save the date for COLLABORATE 09 – IOUG Forum, taking place May 3-7, 2009 at the Orange County Convention Center West in Orlando, Florida.

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Deadline to Submit Your Technical Tips is Next Week!

The deadline to submit your technical tips for the IOUG’s Best Practices Booklet is next week! If you have any best practices/tips for managing an Oracle Database, geared toward developers and DBAs, submit them by Thursday, May 15!

Share the tips and best practices you use in your work all the time—the code snippets and favorite queries you keep within easy reach. “Best practices” include acknowledged and sensible ways of carrying out an activity; “tips” illustrate how some activity could be done in a better way or reveal some undocumented or not-so-well-known feature.

Submissions should be 500-1,000 words long; due to space constraints, we ask that your submission have a specific focus, opposed to any overarching database principles. Submissions can range from beginning to advanced-level skills and should include the actual code and queries used (screenshots and other small graphics are also acceptable).

This ever-popular booklet will mail with the Quarter 4 issue of SELECT Journal and will be distributed at Oracle OpenWorld in September 2008. Share your Oracle knowledge with your peers and submit a tip by Thursday, May 15.

If you have any questions about submitting, please feel free to contact our Best Practices Booklet Coordinator, Theresa Rubinas, at select@ioug.org.

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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

Packt will work closely with the author/s during the writing phase and provide full editorial support. In turn, no previous writing experience is needed…many of their authors have been first-timers.

Author Requirements:

• 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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Receive FREE Oracle SQL Injection Training and Attend the Follow-up Webinar

Interested in learning about SQL injection? Oracle is offering free training materials titled “Defending Against SQL Injection Attacks.” After the training, participants are encouraged to attend the follow-up Webinar, taking place Wednesday, June 18 from 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. CDT, to have their questions answered by Oracle experts.

The Oracle training materials will highlight some of the coding practices required to eliminate SQL injection vulnerabilities when developing in an Oracle environment. The follow-up Webinar will provide you the chance to ask Oracle security experts questions about the proper coding practices required to prevent SQL Injections. Webinar speakers include:

• John Heimann, Senior Director of Security Programs in Global Product Security, Oracle Corporation
  
• Jenny Tsai-Smith, Senior Director of Server Technologies Curriculum Development, Oracle Corporation

Dive deep into the issues surrounding SQL injections, and register* for this Webinar today!

*Space is limited.

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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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