Lowering your IT Costs with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 – A Free Whitepaper

As business operations become more complex, the demand for change in IT increases accordingly, complete with associated risks that must be mitigated. Todayʼs IT professionals are being asked to manage more information, and deliver that information to their users, with ever increasing quality of service, in a timely manner. And, in todayʼs economic climate, IT is additionally tasked with reducing budgets and deriving greater value out of their existing investments. Oracle Database 11g Release 2, the second release of the award winning Oracle Database 11g, provides the foundation for IT professionals to successfully deliver more information with higher quality of service, make more efficient use of their budgets, and reduce the risk of change in data centers. By deploying Oracle Database 11g Release 2 as their data management foundation, organizations can utilize the full power of the worldʼs leading database to:

• Reduce server costs by a factor of 5
• Reduce storage requirements by a factor of 10
• Improve mission critical system performance by a factor of 10
• Increase DBA and Developer productivity by a factor of 2
• Eliminate idle redundancy in the data center simplify their overall IT software portfolio.

This free white paper identifies the key capabilities in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 that enable IT professionals to successfully deliver more information, with higher quality of service, and at much lower cost, than they have ever been able to do so in the past.

HTML Option for My Oracle Support Now Available

If you need to access My Oracle Support in a non-Flash Player environment, an HTML option is now available. Accessible from the My Oracle Support login page, the HTML option includes a subset of functionality available on My Oracle Support. It includes:

* SR management, including create and update SR, attachments, and configuration association
* Browse and search the knowledgebase
* Patch search and download
* Favorites
* User administration
* Hot Topics
* Bug Summary
* Service Request Management Reports

The HTML option does not include the following functionality, which is only available in the Flash version of My Oracle Support:

* Systems
* Projects
* Healthchecks
* Patch Advice & Recommendations
* Inventory Reporting
* CRM OnDemand Service Requests & Knowledge

The same data is presented in both interfaces, including your Favorites. If your browser does not have the Flash player plug-in installed, if it is below the minimum version, or if you have Flash player blocked the “Sign In” button will be grayed out. Use this link to sign in through the HTML interface.

Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.1 Update 1 Available

Oracle announced the general availability of release 9.0 Update 1 for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne on October 27, 2009.

Release 9.0 Update 1 Enhancements Include:

• Financial Management
  • Tax capture by pay item and G/L account
  • Burdening change management
  • Automated G/L account reconciliation
• Project Management
  • Changes to hierarchy for markups
  • Non-billable burden categories
  • Processing fees in detail
  • Job status inquiry performance enhancements
• Human Capital Management
  • Canadian Record of Employment (ROE) web processing
• Manufacturing and Engineering
  • Changes to support 24/7 manufacturing
• Supply Chain Execution (Logistics)
  • Transaction processing in batch shipment confirmation
  • Transaction processing in inventory count cycle update
  • Bulk inventory compliance of regulatory standards
  • License plate FIFO
• Supply Management (Procurement)
  • Multiple language support for UNSPSC (United Nations Standard Products and Services Code)
• Integrations
  • JDE E1 9.0 to Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) 5.5 integration

Release notes and technical support material are now available on MyOracleSupport.

5 New Technologies That Will Change Everything

Well, maybe these new technologies won’t change Everything – but according to Glenn Fleishman, from PC World, we should be on the lookout for: 3D TV, HTML5, video over Wi-Fi, superfast USB, and mobile “augmented reality” to emerge as breakthrough technologies in the new few years.  After you read his article, does it make you think “The Future is Now?”

5 New Technologies That Will Change Everything

brij University upcoming webinars

brij University: An informative series of webinars that will provide great resources and tools specific to the JD Edwards Community. Whether it is information on the latest releases, updates on native JD Edwards functionality or 3rd party product comparisons, brij University will introduce you to ways to better leverage your JD Edwards solution, through pure education.

Click on the links below for more information about upcoming events -

Great Reporting is Just the Beginning with InsightSoftware.com / Nov 4th
Oracle User Productivity Kit (UPK) Webcast / Nov 6th
JD Edwards Technology Stack Explained / Nov 11th
Tools Update & Road Map / Nov 18th
What’s New with JD Edwards World A9.2 Manufacturing & Distribution / Dec 2nd
Effective Order Fill Rates for JD Edwards with X2Order’s Foresight / Dec 16th

The Importance of Discovering Your Plan B

Have you ever said, “Always have a Plan B?” This interesting presentation from Changethis.com by John Mullins and Randy Komisar explains:

Most business plans assume that most everything is already known up front—not the case, as our examples have now shown. As the famed American general in World War II, Douglas MacArthur, is reputed to have once said, “No plan ever survives its first encounter with the enemy.  The process articulated here is a healthy alternative to the straight-jacket of today’s business planning practices—to enable you to anticipate and move beyond a failing Plan A. It is a process designed for learning and discovering, rather than for pitching and selling. It’s a process that recognizes the cold, hard facts—most often, what ultimately works is not the Plan A that was so persuasively articulated in the original plan. Instead, it’s Plan B.

Click on the image below to read this insightful perspective.

Authors:

John Mullins teaches entrepreneurship and venture capital at the London Business School and in regular workshops on four continents. He is also the author of the definitive work on assessing entrepreneurial opportunities, The New Business Road Test.

Randy Komisar is a partner at the esteemed VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a lecturer on Entrepreneurship at Stanford University, and the author of the bestseller The Monk and the Riddle, which was selected as one of the top 100 business books of all time. Together they are the authors of Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model (Harvard Business Press, 2009).

Oracle Critical Patch Update October 2009 Available

The Critical Patch Update for October 2009 was released on October 20, 2009. Oracle strongly recommends applying the patches as soon as possible.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is the starting point for relevant information. It includes a list of products affected, pointers to obtain the patches, a summary of the security vulnerabilities, and links to other important documents. Supported products that are not listed in the “Supported Products and Components Affected” section of the advisory do not require new patches to be applied.

Also, it is essential to review the Critical Patch Update supporting documentation referenced in the Advisory before applying patches, as this is where you can find important pertinent information.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is available at the following location:

Oracle Technology Network: http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/alerts.htm

For JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools 8.9x environments, please review this document from MyOracleSupport for detailed information about correcting issues regarding: Pre-defined local database account with hardcoded passwords; and Fast Path security in Windows client not being enforced in some cases.

The next four Critical Patch Update release dates are:

January 12, 2010
April 13, 2010
July 13, 2010
October 12, 2010

Oracle Magazine – Nov/Dec 2009 On-line

Read the latest Oracle Magazine on-line

The Nov/Dec 2009 issues includes Portraits of Excellence (Editor’s Choice Awards) | Oracle Exadata V2 Announcement | Oracle Datbase 11G Release 2 details | and much more.

Click on the image below to read on-line.  You’ll also see a link to download the issue to read later off-line.

EnterpriseOne Tools 24.0.0 for Applications Releases XE and 8.0 Available

Oracle announces the availability of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools 24.0.0 for customers running JD Edwards EnterpriseOne application releases XE and 8.0.

Prior JDE E1 Tools releases for application versions XE and 8.0 were designated as a Service Pack with an “SP” prefix. For example, the prior Tools release was known as Service Pack 23 or SP23. Beginning with release 24.0.0 the naming convention is being changed to match Oracle’s naming convention.

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools 24.0.0 contains the following additional platform certifications:

• Support for Oracle Database 11g  Note: Beginning with JDE E1 Tools 24.0.0, support for Oracle Database 11g has been expanded to include HP-UX 11.31 on HP Integrity (Itanium based processor) servers.
• Support for IBM i 6.1 on IBM POWER Systems
• Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (64-bit on x86-64 hardware)  Note: JDE E1 continues to run as a 32-bit application within the 64-bit operating system
• Support for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 64-bit edition running on Windows Server 2008
• Support for Microsoft Windows Vista as the operating system for the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne end user, administrative, and development client.  Note: This release extends support to the administrative and development clients. It also simplifies the end users’ desktop to only require Vista standard user access rights (not administrative rights) when running JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications.
• Support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 for the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne development client, deployment server, and enterprise server

The 24.0.0 release also includes general maintenance, including fixes included in maintenance packs thru the SP23_Y1 maintenance release.
For specific details about support platforms, or the tools release process, refer to MyOracleSupport.
Disclaimer: This document is for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into a contract or agreement.

Are your Media Objects being backed up?

Media Objects. What are these magical components within EnterpriseOne? How much would you really miss them if they were gone one day? First, let’s take a look at Media Objects and what they do before we dig deeper to see if they are being backed up.

Media Objects in E1 could be any of the following:

• Text – Notes utilizing built in word processor
• Image – e.g. a gif from a fax
• OLE – Object Linking and Embedding technology
• JDE Shortcuts – launch other E1 applications
• URLs – a web link such as www.brij.net

While in the E1 applications your users are probably using this functionality on a regular basis. They could be in Sales Order entry and need to add special instructions on how that order is to be handled and utilizing the Text type Media Object. They might be using Media Objects to store drawings of inventory items.

So where are these magical Media Objects being stored? Look at the application P98MOQUE.

If you note under the Queue path On-Line you will see the address of the server where these objects are stored. Usually this is the Windows server share path on the deployment server, but it could be any another file server on your network. In this example it is stored on the server ent02 and the share is actually mediaobj.

Check with your Network Administrator and confirm that the path defined under Queue path On-Line (e.g. \\ent02\mediaobj) is being backed up. The entire server might already be in the backup list but we are just doing some double checking.

The other location to look at is your JAS servers. This only relates to clients on SP23-8.96 tools releases. Locate your JAS.ini file first – this may require assistance from your CNC Administrator. Once the JAS.ini is located we will need to look at the stanza [OWWEB]. Here you will find a setting for MO QUEUE= and you will see something similar to the path below:

D:\WebSphere\AppServer\installedApps\ent02\EA_JS_81_ent02.ear\webclient.war\moqueue
Or
MO QUEUE=webclient.war\moqueue

Once again please see your Network Administrator to be sure your directories are being backed up on a regular basis. Keep in mind if you have multiple JAS servers, each one will need to be examined.

These tips are based on a typical out of the box installation on a Windows based platform. There could be other configuration variations, but the point is to be sure your Magical Media Objects are being backed up on a regular basis.

Tim Clauberg
Senior Solution Consultant, brij Image & Information