What’s New Features in OEM Applications Management Pack 13.4(.2) Released 15-JUN-2020

Per Getting Started with Oracle Application Management Pack (AMP) for Oracle E-Business Suite, Release 13.4.1.0.0 (MOS Note 2676355.1)

New Features

Certification with Oracle Enterprise Manager 13.4 Release Update 2

Certification with Oracle Database 19c (for Discovery, Monitoring, Approvals, Patch Manager, and Customization Manager, only)

Support for Oracle Real User Experience Insight 13.3.1.0.2

References

Angelo Rosado’s Oracle Blog on OEM AMS/AMP Announcements:

https://blogs.oracle.com/ebstech/oracle-application-management-pack-release-134100-is-now-available

New EBS AMS Plugin Homepage Screenshot 13c 13.1.1.1.0

Key Features (very similar to 13.1.1.1.0):

System Management

Oracle Application Management Pack provides monitoring alerts and notifications for Oracle Application Framework, Concurrent Processing, Forms services, concurrent managers and requests, Oracle Workflow services, Oracle Database, and middle tier/web servers.

Standardize monitoring settings across your Oracle E-Business Suite environments by utilizing templates to initially specify the monitoring settings and apply those to your monitored targets. You can save, edit, and apply these templates across one or more targets. A monitoring template is specified for a particular target type and can only be applied to targets of the same type.

Use the Concurrent Processing dashboard for a complete picture of concurrent processing on your Oracle E-Business Suite system of both current activities as well as usage statistics. Add concurrent programs and managers as user-defined targets and the system will collect metrics on activity and usage for them.

Configuration Management

Oracle Application Management Pack collects and stores the technology configurations of Oracle E-Business Suite to help centralize monitoring and tracking of changes to Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack configurations including host configuration, database configuration, middleware configuration, patches applied, key profile option changes, versions of technology components, and custom object changes.

Compare configurations between two or more Oracle E-Business Suite systems directly or by comparing configuration snapshots taken at different time intervals.

Configuration templates help to standardize the configuration standards across the company and reduce the configuration drift between various Oracle E-Business Suite instances.

Administrators can track changes by setting up notifications when any unauthorized changes occur to technology stack configurations.

Compliance Management

Compliance framework integration allows you to ensure your Oracle E-Business Suite is compliant with your IT audit requirements, as well as industry and regulatory requirements. Compliance Management dashboards show trends and compliance violations. Proactive, real-time compliance monitoring can significantly reduce the operational risk to business.

Change Management

Change Approval Framework

All changes made with Oracle-delivered patches or customizations in Change Management are processed through a change approval mechanism. A multi-level, hierarchical list of approvers can be set up for each Oracle E-Business Suite target. Auditors can review the change requests as welll as the approvals.

Patch Management

Patch recommendations for Oracle E-Business Suite application products and the technology stack components are made for specific Oracle E-Business target instances to help reduce or eliminate the research work by administrators. These patch recommendations help to ensure all Oracle E-Business Suite systems are current with Oracle-recommended patches. You can deploy database and WLS patches by creating Oracle Enterprise Manager patch plans directly from the patch recommendations user interface.

Using the Patch Management dashboard, you can manage all patching activities of your Oracle E-Business Suite instances and view patch worker logs. Patch Manager simplifies the online patching process and reduces human intervention to a great extent, eliminating the need for continuous monitoring of the patching process.

Patch Manager makes it easier for administrators to check for prerequisite patches and to download the patches in offline mode or directly from My Oracle Support.

Customization Management

Create and deploy custom packages across Oracle E-Business Suite instances similar to Oracle-delivered patches. Customization Manager can help ensure all customizations follow Oracle development standards and/or user-defined customization standards specific to your IT organization. Easily integrate Customization Manager with any third-party source code version control software. This feature also supports the creation of National Language Support (NLS) patches.
Customization Manager can discover customizations within your Oracle E-Business Suite systems and provide detailed reports online or in a spreadsheet format. This helps your organization keep track of the inventory of customizations and use the data for further analysis.

Cloning

Automated Cloning allows you to clone your Oracle E-Business Suite applications for testing, training, or development purposes, leveraging the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Provisioning Framework. A step-by-step interview guides an administrator through the cloning process and facilitates scheduling of Oracle E-Business Suite instance. Administrators can modify the standard cloning procedure to include pre- or post-custom steps, seamlessly automating their cloning process from beginning to end.

Instance Administration

Administrators can use the Instance Administration user interface when adding and removing (scale in and scale out) application services, application nodes, and managed servers.

Advertisement

Okay, an Autonomous Database is one that Wanders Off by Itself.

Used without express permission from windowsinstructed.com

In a 2014 VoucherCloud.net (a coupon website) survey of the non-technical U.S. general public:

• 11% believed HTML wss a sexually-transmitted disease
• 51% believed a stormy weather condition would affect their access to the Cloud
• 27% thought a gigabyte was a common insect in South America
• 18% thought Blu-ray was a marine animal
• 23% thought an MP3 was a Star Wars robot
• 12% thought USB is the acronym for a European country
• 42% said they believed a motherboard was “the deck of a cruise ship”
• 77% could not identify what SEO means
• 15% say software is comffortable clothing

However, 61% of the 2,392 respondents (18 and older) all thought it was important to have a good knowledge of technology.

That explains why in ZDNet’s Oracle’s Next Chapter: The Autonomous Database and the DBA (https://www.zdnet.com/article/oracles-next-chapter-the-autonomous-database-and-the-dba/) takes a bit of chewing to understand that when a vendor says “you’ll save $250K by moving to the Cloud,” that’s akin to someone saying, “You’ll save $40,000 by not buying a car, but renting it at $40/day from Hertz/Avis/Thrifty/Dollar.”

Well, yes, but not quite.  Rental agencies have those add-ons such as a Collision Damage Waiver, which can be thought of as the same as that 15% mandatory support fee needed on top of the core/sizing/machine-size fee, providing coverage in case something goes awry (or buggy, or BSOD’s for no known reason.)

And simply, if you stop paying, you don’t have a car/database/middleware/website.  If you do decide to opt for the rent-to-own option, just like the ubiquitous furniture rentals used by many seasoned relocation workers, doing so does cost much more than buying the furniture outright (but you don’t have to move it, and you get to turn it in, and trade-up or down when you wish, subject to the terms of your rental agreement.)

[Terms are important, as you will notice in the new Cloud On-Premise agreement, it does have a 4-year minimum term – similar to a limited term car lease.  And it comes with an early termination cost. And similarly it has “limited mileage” conditions, which if you go over your CPU/sizing/feature limits, you’ll simply be billed extra for that.  Convenience has costs.]

An autonomous database at this stage is similar to self-driving cars – given super-precise limitations, on a controlled environment, with well-defined conditions, yes, the Optimizer stays within the lanes and keeps the database engine humming along. Whence the odd situation is encountered, back to the driver/DBA to figure out what to-do and what went wrong.

The LA TImes article:
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-1-10-americans-html-std-study-finds-20140304-story.html

The full VoucherCloud.net survey results:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9HJeR-F9NIeczNDb2hVb2p6UTQ/edit

In closing, in case you missed it, Japan created a banana with edible peels: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/edible-peel-bananas-created-japan-food-spd/

Top 7 Reasons Organizations Should Not Automatically Switch to Hosted Enterprise Technology

Not Cloud?

A college education can make you think differently.  As I read the original article, the many times my Statistics professors pointed out that anyone can basically lie with numbers to make them support whichever position they want. This was equally true in a class I took on Mass Persuasion and Propaganda.

Thus I present this same article, with an inversion of the concluded statistical results of the IDG survey, with minor modifications to the explanations given to suit the results of the measures.  Respect given to the original author, Tori Ballantine, who is a product marketing lead at Hyland Cloud.  No offense is intended by this grammatical exercise in statistical results inversion.

Original Article:

Top 7 Reasons Manufacturers Should Host Enterprise Technology
https://www.mbtmag.com/article/2018/07/top-7-reasons-manufacturers-should-host-enterprise-technology

Top 7 Reasons Organizations Should Not Automatically Switch to Hosted or Cloud Enterprise Technology

As one of the leading industries that was an early adopter of process automation, manufacturing is often ahead of the curve when it comes to seeking ways to improve processes — yet still has work to do in the technology adoption realm. While the trend for cloud adoption is increasing over on-premises solutions overall, some organizations, including manufacturers, are hesitant to make the transition to the cloud.

There are countless compelling reasons to transition to hosted enterprise applications. According to a recent survey from IDG, IT leaders at companies with 250+ employees, from a wide range of industries and company sizes, agreed on seven areas where cloud computing should benefit their organizations. These included:

Disaster Recovery

Disasters, both natural and man-made, are inherently unpredictable. When the worst-case scenario happens, organizations need improved disaster recovery capabilities in place — including the economic resources to replicate content in multiple locations. According to the IDG survey, about 33 percent, of IT leaders did not find disaster recovery as the number one reason they would move, or have moved to hosted enterprise solutions. By switching to a hosted solution, about 1/3 of organizations could not get their crucial application running as soon as possible after an emergent situation, and are therefore unable to serve their customers.

Data Availability

IT leaders know that data and content are essential components of their daily business operations. In fact, according to the IDG research, 45 percent of survey participant listed data availability as the second leading limitation cited about cloud enterprise applications being unable to provide. Access to mission-critical information, when they need it, wherever they are, is essential for organizations to stay competitive and provide uninterrupted service. With no noticeable increase to uptime compared to on-premises applications, hosted solutions did not provide 24/7/365 data availability.

Cost Savings

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the third most popular reason IT leaders seek cloud solutions is because of cost savings. Hosting in the cloud eliminates the need for upfront investment in hardware and the expense of maintaining and updated hosting infrastructure by shifting the cost basis to long-term operational costs. While hosting software solutions on-premises carries more than just risk; it carries a fair amount of operational costs. By hosting enterprise solutions in the cloud, organizations will reduce capital costs with a possible reduction in operating costs — including staffing, overtime, maintenance and physical security when centralized under a hosting provider.

Incident Response

The IDG survey found that 55 percent of IT professionals listed incident response as another area where cloud solutions provided no significant benefit over on-premises options. Large-scale systems can develop more efficient incident response capabilities, and improve incident response times compared to smaller, non-consolidated systems. As seconds tick by, compliance fines can increase along with end-user dissatisfaction. So having a quick incident response time is essential to reduce risk and ensure end-user satisfaction.

Security Expertise

The best providers that offer hosted solutions constantly evaluate and evolve their practices to protect customers’ data. This is crucial because up to 59 percent of IDG survey responders noted that security expertise as another leading reason they do not select cloud applications. Organizations with cloud-hosted applications could take advantage of the aggregated security expertise from their vendors to improve their own operations and make sure information is safe, but only by complying with externally-driven security standards that were either not enforceable due to application restrictions (legacy versioning, design constraints, third-party non-compliant architecture, et.al.) To ensure your content stays safe, it’s important to seek cloud providers with the right credentials — look for certifications such as SOC 1 and 2 or 3 audited, ISO 27001 and CSA STAR Registrant.

Geographical Disbursement

The IDG survey found that over 63 percent of IT professionals were not seeking geographical disbursement in where their data is stored. In the event of data unavailability in a local data center, having a copy of the data in a separate geographical area ensures performance and availability of the data sources, though resources to use the data may not be readily available as they are co-located in the local region of the primary data.

Expert Access

IT professionals seek hosted solutions because the best hosted software applications employ top-notch security professionals. Gaining access to these professionals’ insight helps ensure concerns are addressed and the software delivers on the organization’s needs.

In order to facilitate the best possible experience for your customers, it’s important to keep up with technology trends that give you the data and insights you need to provide quality service. For many firms, it means not only focusing on process automation on the manufacturing floor, but also within the internal processes driven by data. There’s a huge shift happening with how organizations choose to deploy software. In fact, according to a recent AIIM study, almost 25% of respondents from all industries are not seeking to deploy cloud software in any fashion. 60 percent of those surveyed plan to focus on a non-hybrid approach, focusing primarily on leveraging on-premises deployments, while 38 percent said they will deploy cloud solutions.

As noted in the seven areas above, the reasons for the lack of shift to selecting hosted enterprise applications are diverse and compelling. The cloud provides users with greater access to their information, when and where they need to access it — and doesn’t confine users to a on-premise data source. When combined with the other benefits of improved business continuity, cost savings, incident response, security expertise and expert access, organizations should carefully consider that their important information and content is more available and secure in the cloud.

 

Getting Started with OEM 13cR2 (13.2.2.0.0) Enterprise Manager

OEM13c Release 2 Enterprise Manager Summary Page

Relatively easy installation, a new learning curve to master for post-installation maintenance and patching.
The principal changes in Release 2 of 13c are the segregation of the Cloud Management Services plugins (and related functionality) to specific licensable plugin components – namely:

• Cloud Services Management – used for provisioning, allocation, and administration (think “infrastructure”) of Oracle Public Cloud-based resources (databases, development tools, middleware, etc.)
• Oracle Cloud Application – a portal punch-out to access Oracle Cloud-based applications such as hosted e-Business Suite, Cloud Content Management, Cloud SOA Suite, Cloud Identity Management, etc. (think “apps”.)
• Cloud Framework – a repackaging of the EM OMS framework components, and the only portion of the “cloud” components included in the base OEM licensing.
  Installation guide: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/grid-control/documentation/oem-091904.html

Cloud Management related plugins for OEM13cR2

This proof-of-concept testbed system was based upon the latest available installer set – Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13c Release 2 Plug-in Update 1 (13.2.0.0) – we happen to be testing backwards-compatibility with some 10g databases before committing to the upgrade.  Direct (out-of-place) upgrades are supported for version of EM 12.1.0.4 and newer.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/enterprise-manager/downloads

Fusion Middleware in this release is Weblogic 12.1.3
The host system is built upon Windows Server 2012 R2, single-tier, 16GB RAM, 2 cores, also hosting the OMS repository database in a 12.2.0.1.0 EE installation.  Since the DB Templates provided seemed to be specific for a 12.1.x database (and errors out in certain steps during the build), I simply created a generic database from the standard template with the pre-requisite parameter settings (e.g. _allow_insert_with_update_check=TRUE; sessions > 300; shared_pool_size (10% of SGA); etc.) , and pre-created the required tablespaces:

MGMT_AD4J_TS
MGMT_ECM_DEPOT_TS
MGMT_TABLESPACE

  During the installation, the (Oracle Universal Installer) OUI will create the following new users assigned to these tablespaces:

Open:
SYSMAN
SYSMAN_TYPES
SYSMAN_BIPLATFORM
SYSMAN_STB
SYSMAN_OPSS
SYSMAN_MDS
MGMT_VIEW

Expired & Locked:
CLOUD_ENGINE_USER
CLOUD_SWLIB_USER
EUS_ENGINE_USER
SYSMAN_RO

The standard download set includes a single executable file (.exe or .bin) and several additional ZIP archives.  These are to be staged in a single directory, and the ZIP files do NOT need to be pre-extracted.

Overall, the installation was straight-forward and as-documented (despite this being a Windows installation – which usually has its own quirks.) The portion that I feel has the steepest learning curve is post-installation maintenance, and particularly patching. The new tool in 13c, the OMSpatcher (Patchset 19999993 – think of it as a Java wrapper for opatch) was really designed for use specficially in a cloud-based environment and hasn’t been completely polished for use on-premise in smaller installations.

For example, it is designed to rely upon an active Weblogic AdminServer to instantiate it’s requests for inventory versioning information and component availability for patching. But if any of those components are actually in-use by the AdminServer itself, it will tend to fail to apply, and instead provide a lengthy step-by-step instruction set of how to accomplish all of the steps manually. Depending on the complexity of your OEM setup (e.g. the number of registered plugins and target types) this could take over an hour to get the patching utility to fail and then provide the manual steps.

The OEM-specific version of OPatch (Patchset 6880880) is quite different than its predecessors.  While the OMSPatcher uses the prior “unzip into the existing Oracle Home” installation technique, the OPatch utility itself now is a Java installer that relies on the OUI to allow updating of component versioning and inventory adjustments. Most importantly, you will need to “install” the new version of OPatch before being allowed to continue with your planned patching:

$JAVA_PATH\java -jar $PATCH_STAGE\6880880\opatch_generic.jar -silent oracle_home=$ORACLE_HOME (being updated for OPatch)

This OPatch update needs to be applied (before patching) to every Oracle Home using 13c technology (the OMS home, the Agent Home, other FMW homes at version 12.1.3 or newer, etc.)

See MOS EM 13c: How to Apply a Patch to the Enterprise Manager 13c Cloud Control OMS Oracle Home (Doc ID 2091619.1) for details about making an OMSPatcher property file, and why you want to create one.

Final steps executed:
Build general purpose 12.2.0.1.0 database with new tablespaces.
Install Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13c Release 2 Plug-in Update 1 (13.2.0.0)
Patch 19999993: EM OMSPatcher latest version 13.8.0.0.2 (unzip to ORACLE_HOME)
Patch 6880880: EM OPatch latest version 13.9.0.0.0 (both OMS and Agent)

cd $PATCH_STAGE\<patch#>
$FMW_HOME\OMSPatcher\omspatcher apply -analyze -property_file 
$FMW_HOME\OMSPatcher\omspatcher apply -property_file  [OMS_DISABLE_HOST_CHECK=true  -- a useful option added to deal with virtual host names]

Patch 25163555: Tracking bug for Back-porting 24588124 oms side fix
Patch 25604219: MERGE REQUEST ON TOP OF 13.2.0.0.0 FOR BUGS 25497622 25497731 25506784
Patch 25387277: APR-2017 PSU OMS 13.2.0.0.170418
Patch 25162444: EM-BEACON Bundle Patch 13.2.0.0.161231 (Agent)
Patch 25580746: EM-AGENT Bundle Patch 13.2.0.0.170331 (Agent)

Other useful references:

Enterprise Manager 13.2 Master Bundle Patch List (Doc ID 2219797.1)
13.2.0.0.170418 Enterprise Manager Base Platform Patch Set Update (PSU) Readme for Oracle Management Server (OMS) (Doc ID 2246778.1)

What’s New Features in Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) Cloud Control 12c Release 5 (12.1.0.5)

I kept getting asked what’s new in Release 5 – so here’s the summary of what’s changed since 12.1.0.4.0 (the prior release for the past 12 months):

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/grid-control/downloads/index.html

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/doc.121/e25353

What’s New in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 5 (12.1.0.5)

•     Oracle Cloud Management (Hybrid Cloud)
•     Database Plug-in 12.1.0.8 Features
•     Fusion Middleware Plug-in 12.1.0.8 Features
•     Cloud Management Plug-in 12.1.0.10 Features
•     Chargeback and Consolidation Planner Plug-in 12.1.0.7 Features
•     Virtual Infrastructure Plug-in 12.1.0.2

Oracle Cloud Management (Hybrid Cloud) – This enhancement is new in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Release 5 (12.1.0.5).
Enterprise Manager Cloud Control now provides you with a single pane of glass for monitoring and managing both your on-premise and Oracle Cloud deployments, all from the same management console. By deploying Management Agents onto the Oracle Cloud virtual hosts serving your Oracle Cloud services, you are able to manage Oracle Cloud targets just as you would any other targets. The communication between Management Agents and your on-premise Oracle management service instances is secure from external interference. Support is provided for managing Oracle Database and Fusion Middleware PaaS targets, as well as JVMD support for monitoring JVMs on your Oracle Cloud virtual hosts.

Oracle Cloud Management includes the following key features:

•     Automated agent deployment and configuration
•     Database and Java PaaS instances monitoring
•     Incident management including notifications and ticketing integration
•     Configuration management including Search and Inventory, comparison between on-premise and cloud instances, configuration history, and compliance
•     Cloning between on-premise and Oracle Cloud
•     One-off patching of Oracle Cloud database instances

Database Plug-in 12.1.0.8 Features

• Snap Clone Leveraging Sparse Clones on Exadata
  You can now create a Test Master pluggable database (PDB) to use as the snapshot source for thin cloning on Exadata ACFS.
  For functional testing scenarios, for example on development or testing systems, business IT users now have on-demand access to production data copies without incurring the penalty of multi-terrabyte storage.
• Data Cloning to Oracle Cloud
  With this release you have the following data cloning to Oracle Cloud options:
  • Like-to-like cloning: on premise to-from Oracle Private Cloud:
    Enterprise Manager12c PDB to 12c PDB, assuming the containers exist on both sides
    Regular non-container dedicated database to dedicated database
  • Like-to-unlike data migration:
    Regular to PDB migration where the source is an on-premise non-PDB database and the data is migrated to a cloud based PDB
    PDB to normal database migration where the source is a PDB on an Oracle PaaS cloud and data and schema are migrated to a non-container CDB on premise

Fusion Middleware Plug-in 12.1.0.8 Features

• Generic JVM Provisioning for Private Cloud
  This feature enables self-service users to provision non-Oracle middleware components as cloud services. It also uses Enterprise Manager’s chargeback and quota management capabilities to enable administrators to limit service usage based on organizational policies.
• JVMD Support for PaaS
  Enterprise Manager Cloud Control now enables you to deploy JVMD agents on your Oracle Cloud virtual hosts. These deployed JVMD agents can report to a JVMD engine deployed in your private network. This feature enables you to monitor the JVMs deployed on the virtual hosts running your Oracle Cloud services as well as the JVMs deployed on the hosts in your private network using a single console, for example Enterprise Manager Cloud Control deployed in your private network.
• Middleware Self Service Portal Support for Virtual Java as a Service with Exalogic Systems
  WebLogic services that have been provisioned on Exalogic systems using Service Manager can now be viewed in the Cloud Self Service Portal as part of the Exalogic Private Cloud service family.
• MWaaS on Solaris SPARC
  This project integrates MWaaS with the Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center. It provides the ability to dynamically add or remove the virtual hardware in a MWaaS cloud.

Cloud Management Plug-in 12.1.0.10 Features

• Dynamic Scaling of PaaS Zone Through Integration with the Sun Solaris SPARC Ops Center 12c Adapter
  Enterprise Manager 12c is integrated with the Ops Center through the Sun Solaris SPARC adapter. An instance of this registered adapter is used by the associated PaaS Infrastructure zone to provision or delete VMs on demand. The communication with the Ops Center server is achieved through the use of a client kit.
  This integration enables customers to provide layered services capability in a private cloud, for example DBaaS using a Solaris VM based IaaS. Any spike in compute demand can now be handled instantly by cloud administrators.
• DBaaS PaaS Provider Pools Integration with Ops Center
  Administrators can now increase the capacity of a DBaaS pool by clicking a single button. Doing this transparently provisions a virtual machine or cluster through the associated Ops Center adapter attached to the PaaS zone. It also deploys the requisite software components, for example Enterprise Manager Agent, Grid Infrastructure, Oracle Database and so on, through the gold image provisioning or by cloning from an existing reference member of the pool.
  Compute resource scarcity at PaaS provider level results in the failure of self service provisioning requests. This integration helps SSA administrators to respond to such failures promptly.
• Clone to Oracle Cloud
  Administrators now have the ability to create a full clone of an Enterprise Manager 12c pluggable database amongst existing container databases within the on-premise IT infrastructure or to an Oracle Cloud. Administrators can also clone a service from on-premise to Oracle PaaS and vice-versa. The cloning is supported in two broad categories:
  •     Peer-peer clone: Clones directly from an on-premise target to Oracle Cloud.
  •     Clone through the Software Library: Administrators can archive a gold image into the Software Library in one step and then deploy it in a separate step.

Chargeback and Consolidation Planner Plug-in 12.1.0.7 Features

• Host Consolidation Support for Oracle Cloud Shapes
  Oracle Enterprise Manager now provides host consolidation support for Oracle Cloud shapes. When creating scenarios for physical server to physical server (P2P) consolidations that target new or phantom destinations, you can choose physical machines configured in the Oracle cloud by selecting the cloud computing configuration, or shape, to use as the destination. Oracle provides a wide range of shapes to help you select a combination of processing power and memory for your instances that best suits your business requirements.

Virtual Infrastructure Plug-in 12.1.0.2

• Dynamic Resource Provisioning Support
  Through integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center, dynamic on-demand resource provisioning enables Oracle Cloud and self service administrators to dynamically increase or decrease resources in their private cloud setup based on usage requirements. Resources can either be infrastructure resources such as hosts (based on virtual machines) or platform resources such as middleware and database Oracle homes. Resources can be dynamically added when additional service instances need to be provisioned due to high usage or decreased if existing resources are not being used.

That’s it, in a nutshell.

IOUG Podcast 30-APR-2013 Database 12c Beta Revelations at Collaborate 13

For the week of April 30th, 2013:

An Interview with Bobby Curtis and James Lui:

• Database 12c Revelations at Collaborate
• A Little Insight into Oracle’s Beta Program

IOUG Podcast 30-APR-2013 Database 12c Beta Revelations at Collaborate 13

Subscribe to this Podcast (RSS) or iTunes

Transcript:

Hi, I’m James Lui,  a senior applications DBA working at Aramark Uniform Services. and I’m Bobby Curtis, a Solution Architect with BIAS Corporation, Oracle Platinum Partner.

[James] We just finished an Introduction to 12c New Features and Functionality. One of the reasons we wanted to bring this to the Users Group’s attention.is that out on the internet, we were Google-ing for the new Database 12c we wanted to find out, it’s not a general release right now; it’s not generally available.  But there are Oracle Beta test partners out there looking at it, whacking it and trying to make it work. But what we did find was a little disturbing.There’s a lot of stuff dating back to early last year (2012) that partners that are on these Betas are blogging about features that may or may not be in the product. They’re putting SQL code out there that is wrong. That came to our attention when we were talking with other Oracle Partners out here (at Collaborate). What do we do about this? So our position on this was to try to start elevating the invisibility of what is happening out there with regard to NDA Beta Partners, like Bobby and I, who are are subject to… You can’t talk about it, or you can’t disclose stuff that isn’t real.

The feature sets in the final release are subject to what Oracle wants to try to present as a solid product that works to end-user customers. Not something that the wheels are going to fall off.just because they tried it (they put some spinners on it) and it ends up falling off and it’s a bad idea.   The whole purpose for this idea is we don’t do GA on an unstable product. Let’s let experts hammer at this thing. See if it works, get an idea from a users group perspective (trying to represent as many people, as possible) what features work, what doesn’t work. and what needs to be fixed before the thing goes live.

[Bobby] That way the users understand what they’re really getting versus what the hearsay out there.. Because everything that’s been posted out there (on the blogs) violates the NDAs. and Oracle can pull things (features) out and nobody really knows it because they’re relying on older postings that were not authorized anyway.  So this session was to provide the users groups with something based upon here’s what we’ve seen, and here’s what we think is going to be in there, but it’s not guaranteed.

[James] Realistically we do know that forward information is good. Telling people that the documentation that will be provided is more massive than ever before. It’s going to give you direction as a DBA, developer or manager trying to make a decision to adopt this product. There is more to read than ever (before.) There’s more room for books to be written than ever. There’s definitely more room for webinars about this product. They’re (Oracle’s) thinking about at least 500+ new feature functionalities that are really exciting stuff. And we covered maybe…

[Bobby] Like, 25 of them — the tip of an iceberg on this product.

[James] But in terms of what that final product ends up being, when Oracle decides it’s ready for market, we had the confidence as users group representatives (ODTUG, IOUG, UKOUG, Australia OUG) when we hammered it to death, these features worked, with the caveat of saying “Fix this ” then we’re (users groups) happy.

That’s the idea behind this session. Telling people that going forward, you may need to go back to the drawing board or to school to find out how to use this product in the best way.

But the exciting part is here at Collaborate, IOUG was able to give those who attended our session a preview of the future in a very substantial technical way.

[Bobby] And so we thought it would be a good idea, so okay there’s a lot of talk about it, everybody’s asking when’s it coming out, what’s going on? So from a users group perspective, let’s give everyone not so much a peek into it, but to say here’s what’s coming from what we know of, from looking at the Betas.

But, again at the same time letting everyone know that just because we say something’s coming, Oracle could pull the plug (on that feature) at some point-in-time and say, “That’s not going to be added in this release. “ So basically, this was a way to give to the users groups, who have been saying, “We’ve been talking about it for six months. But what’s really in it?” And as we alluded to earlier, we’ve only touched the “tip of the iceberg” – we only did 25 of them (the new features). And we didn’t do a Top-10 or anything like that.  We just said, here are the 25 features we tested during Beta testing, and here’s what our thoughts are. So we think we gave the users groups a good base of understanding where it’s (Database 12c) coming from, and what can be potentially looked at, and what they could use.  And from the reaction we got from the crowd, was actually pretty good.

[James] And Bobby represents the partner, implementer, system integrator world of the consultants that are out there who are going to be challenged with actually upgrading (systems), or doing the installations. I represent the existing customer base of Oracle, we’re an Applications e-Business shop; we want to know what does that roadmap affect for us. What does 12c give us to save money basically as an organization? So between the two of us, we actually do cover a big part of that world. and we were very heartened by the (experiences) during the Beta testing (we were Phase 3, probably the last (Beta) before General Availability), we’re pretty happy with the product. Perhaps, shockingly good?

[Bobby] This is actually by far the best release they (Oracle) have come out with on a first release. Because they’ve listened to the users groups, and took a lot of the things that we wanted, put it into it (Database 12c.)

[James] And by being part of the Beta Program, the people behind the Beta Program brought the user groups in confidence, to say you people represent key members of the user community. Hit this thing until it breaks and tell us what it’s going to need for this product to go to General (Availability).. And that’s what we felt we did. We did things that were very unexpected

[Bobby] Any time you get a (Database) developer standing behind your shoulder… because that was one of the really impressive things behind the Beta testing. You had 9 testers, and Oracle put 50 of their people in the room with us. and when we broke it, they literally pulled the code open and looked at it and said, “Here’s why it’s broken.” And that in-turn gave Oracle the insight to say, “Okay what did you guys do?” versus “How did it break?” So that way they can go fix the code and can be more responsive to what users are going to do out in the marketplace.

[James]  And while it’s not a generally-accepted practice, nor a best practice idea, I as an e-Business Suite Customer ended up bringing in a live R12.1.3 version instance. Not certified. Not supposed to be certified. Certainly Oracle’s own (e-Business Suite) Development group behind Applications Technology does not certify you’re supposed to be doing (Database) 12c upgrades. But in the context of a Beta, for me this is the exciting way to do it. You take a sandbox instance, you take a copy of a live R12 instance and you try to do the upgrade. The only things that broke, was the stuff that Oracle told us would break, because they de-support those particular features.  That was the guarantee that makes it whole.

[Bobby] They listened and they fixed it. So that when GA comes out, you can take it to Production if you want.  I think that’s what a lot of people are going to be shocked about, because most organizations wait for Release 2, to be honest. But Release 1 of (Database) 12c, we think, from the user group perspective could be production-ready and be used.

[James] That’s better than most other software companies that try to be first to market with a new feature, and let the user community test it and find out where the bugs are. That was a different philosophy that we met (at Oracle). And we know the Beta 1 and Beta 2 release testings uncovered thousands and tens of thousands of problems that got fixed by the time we got our hands on it. The improvements that Oracle has actually made in that process  That’s a good step in the right direction, and we would hope every software vendor actually does that same thing.  Because IOUG being very agnostic about what the user community needs to make a business solution happen, having Oracle do that just makes their job easier.

See also:

Oracle Enterprise Manager Tips & Best Practices 2013

Defining a “Cloud” or is it “Fog”?

When did a personal Storage Area Network (SAN) device become a “Cloud”, much less a “Personal Cloud?”

The Cloud concept originally was that instead of having dedicated physical devices upon which to store all of your “stuff” (professionally, that would be databases, application code, software, files, et.al.), you would have potentially an Application Service Provider (ASP or hosting company) give you <x> amount of storage for <y> price and you wouldn’t worry about how much physical hardware went into the result.  You pay to store.

Because it was a “cloud” you could “see” your storage from a number of different places and thus it would be more accessible.

Then came “Private Clouds” — the concept of actually owning the storage hardware and bringing it inside of your firewall so it was more secure and only internally visible, and perhaps you could cut out the added cost of a provider’s overhead.

In this example, YuuWaa Software is technically a cloud backup solution (for which you would normally pay “x” for “y” price to store your stuff.)  But once you point the software back to a single external hard drive sitting in your closet, prone to whatever failures arise, it is not “cloud-like” in any way. This is akin to making “a mountain out of a mole-hill.”  It’s just a remote backup. Unless you have a backup, for your backup system, it probably isn’t as reliable as you’d think.

Clouds can be beautiful and puffy, or they can contain unforeseen dangers. So, know your “Clouds.”