Texas Technocrat

Oracle Release 12 Vision Install

A fellow DBA and myself just recently completed a Release 12 installation. I started it and quickly ran into issues with the forms server. I then punted the project over to him to have a second opinion and to ensure that I did not make any mistakes. I am an interim/backup DBA so I thought a more specialized resource might have better luck.

Fortunately for me, but unfortunately for the team, he ran into the same issue. We were installing the Vision test instance on a new server with Oracle Enterprise LINUX. On the surface, this would appear to be a slam dunk. But it did not turn out that way all. After some significant assistance from an Oracle support representative, my Oracle peer was able to get the Vision instance up and running.

The problem is that the LINUX Team and Applications Team do not appear to be cooperating with each another. Apparently, the Release 12 installation requires an older version of Motif than what Oracle Enterprise LINUX contains. According to our support rep, we can only run the base 12.1.1 with IE 7. That seems a bit odd since Internet Explorer is currently on version 9 and 10 is approaching beta. We were assured that patching to a higher version of Release 12 will support future versions of IE.

So let this be a warning to anyone installing Oracle Applications Release 12 on OEL. It can be done but I was a disappointed that the installation process is broken and needs a considerable amount of work to get it working. I had higher expectations since this is a flagship product.

Monster....From the Other Side

We are recruiting for an Oracle DBA and I was able to see Monster from the employer side. I have to admit that I was a bit surprised in a couple of areas. The first item I noticed is a bit humorous. Why would someone apply for a job from another state if they would not relocate? I know people work remotely due to our virtual world, but it seems a bit of a reach to believe someone would hire a permanent employee without ever meeting them.

When we placed the ad, we were presented with an option to receive a list of "spotlight candidates". This might be a good tip for someone who wants a competitive advantage. Another thing I noticed was that employers pay for every little item. A basic listing is economical but if an employer wants to search resumes, that costs extra. What does this mean to the job seeker? Many companies are probably not going to pay for the extra search feature. If a candidate believes that just posting a resume will attract attention, they are missing the majority of offers on Monster. Monster will send e-mails to candidates for saved searches. But, the employer pays for this service, resulting in a small sample of job openings.

A final item I noticed was the poor quality of the resumes. I was surprised at both at the layout and the content. From my perspective, most resumes seemed to lack details, especially quantifiable details. Resumes with specific, quantifiable information seemed to have more credibility. I picked up this skill in the Navy by writing performance reports. We had a very limited space to squeeze in language that would make or break our chances for promotion. Just like a performance report, I would recommend that everyone choose your words wisely when preparing a resume.

 

 

Project Management Symposium Thoughts

I recently attended a Project Management Symposium hosted by the University of Texas at Dallas. The keynote speakers were concerned with large construction projects; the LBJ Expressway, Panama Canal and UTD building initiatives. I am not sure that software project management has too much in common with large building projects but it was still an excellent conference. I did have a couple of key points that I would like to discuss. 

The first major take away is the importance of communication. I often find that the vast majority of business professionals are terrible communicators. It's not that they don't understand grammar, although many do have difficulty with basic tenets of the English language. My point is that that most professionals don't know how to communicate effectively.  They often use the wrong medium to send the wrong message to the wrong people. Many times I see an inflammatory e-mail sent to a large number of people that should have been communicated by phone, or better yet, face to face. Their original message becomes lost in the inflammatory e-mail. Unfortunately, these messages are circulated around another dozen times. Additionally, I have seen minor issues escalate to major confrontations when both parties avoid communication and use e-mail to express their discontent. The symposium had a couple of excellent sessions on social media and how to use it for project management. Another breakout session discussed communication media amoung the generations. According to the speaker, ggeneration X & Y are internet natives while the Baby Boomers and Silent Generation are not naturally comfortable with electronic media. This observation can change the way in which communication is handled. 

The other major item that caused me to ponder is the role of the deidcated vs. part time role of the project manager. I see this topic appear from time to time on the LinkedIn discussions. The project management community promotes the use of the dedicated project manager in organizations. In a perfect world, I totally agree. However, most organizations seem to lump project management in with department managers or with senior technical leads. We had an excellent session on the role of the technical or hybrid project manager. It was a hotly discussed item as to whether a technical staff member can perform project management duties. In my experience, the answer is yes. In fact, I believe that project management occurs at many levels of an organization. The part-time project management phenomenon occurs for two major reasons; organizations are not aware of the projectized strcture and project management skills are often an assumed skill set (much like written and verbal communication skills). As with most assumptions, these are often wrong and can lead to disastrous consequences.

I am a big fan of PMI and I believe that both full-time and part-time/hybrid project managers should invest training time and dollars in the PMI program. At the very least, PMI provides a common structure and lnguage on "how to get things done".        

iPad 2 Impressions

I have finally gone and done it....

After years of disparging Apple and holding firm against the cult of Apple, I have given in. Actually, I am only willing to partially to offer a mea culpa. My mother in law has an iPad and my daughter immediately confiscated the device on site. I knew it was just a matter of time before I caved in. This weekend we purchased an iPad 2.

What I like:The interface is simply stunning. Books, magazines and multi-media are available at a touch. The apps interface make accessing information so much easier. The games are cute, colorful and lite. The size is about the same as a legal pad. To me, this is the future of user interfaces. There are apps to do almost anything you want to do. Granted programming and heavy media editing won't be done on the iPad, but that is not its purpose.

What I don't like:Apple has a very tight ecosystem. It is easy to notice which companies Apple does not get along with. There is no Zune, Adobe Acrobat, MS Office, Flash, Bing Maps or anything else related to Microsoft or Adobe. I understand the MacBooks allow these applications but not iPhones or iPads. I want to import and export files but that is not possible unless there is an associated application. I am waiting for more complex games. Shenandoah Studio is going to fill that gap. They are converting some of my favorite board games.

Cool Apps: I have only had the iPad for a few days but I have found a few apps I really like. The DirecTV app is a great remote control. I played a great trick on the family when I started discretley started changing channeles with the iPad. I had to stop when my wife was ready to call the DirectTV repairman. The Civil War Today app is remarkable. I am following the Civil War day by day through diaries, newspapers, photos and maps. Wired Magazine is a treat as well. My paper copies were starting to pile up in the office. For some reason, reading on the iPad is so much more interactive and fun.

I really like the iPad. I like it so much that I have found myself wanting more applications for the iPad. This is the future of user interface and should be a model for all developers.

 

Historical Use of GIS

I noticed a post one of my Yahoo groups concerning the use of GIS in historical projects. I am a bit of an amateur historian so I found this NY Times article particualrly interesting. Last year, I visited the Revolutionary War battlefield at Monmouth, New Jersey. A member of the local historical society gave us a personal tour of the area. During lunch, we had a lengthy discussion concerning the use of GIS to recreate the battlefield since most of it was covered by the ever present urban sprawl. This battle would benefit significantly from this technology since the battle was strung out across the British column.  



Vertex Converison from Windows to LINUX

 

The Oracle Applications conversion from Windows to LINUX is still moving along, a bit slower than anyone anticipated. There are three main issues that remain to be fixed. Actually, make that two remaining issues. We were able to fix the Vertex tax issue. Vertex is a tax engine that is an integral part of Oracle Payroll. This is not a major issue for a school district since our employees typically live in a small geographic area. However, Oracle Payroll must have these tables in order to work correctly. The primary Oracle support note for Quantum/Vertex is 224273.1. Our migration DBA ran into issues when installing the patch. He fixed the patch with a combination of upgrading to 11.2.0.2, applied two database patches (10149223 and 10229719) and re-ran the adctxprv.sql script. The SGA was apparently too large as well, this one seems a bit strange to me. But the product installed and that hurdle was overcome.

The next issue we ran into involved the configuration. I suspect that few Oracle shops are on Windows so speicifc conversion issues are not usally documented. By reviewing the Vertex stack on Windows and LINUX, it appeared that Windows placed its execution code in %PAY_TOP%\vendor\quantum\utils while LINUX placed the code in a differnt folder: $PAY_TOP/vendor/quantum/lib. The Vertex stack of folders was archived and moved becuase the concurrent program Quantum Program Update does not update the existing Vertex/Quantum folders. Once the folders were clean, the program worked its magic. I was able to run the Quantum Data Update with June 2011 tax information. Our Payroll Analyst confirmed that everything was working fine by executing a successful Payroll run.

We have two remaining issues: RightFax and check printing through AcuPrint.  

Considerations for Migrating Oracle from Windows to LINUX

It's been a busy couple of weeks. We are moving from Windows to LINUX for our Oracle Applications Server and 10g Database. We are also upgrading the database to 11g. Since this is a one-time process, we have contracted a DBA to perform the conversion. There are several reasons for this migration and I discussed a few of them on an earlier post from October, 2010 which provides some light on the subject.

During the conversion planning phase, we identified three main areas of concern. The first area is interfaces. We know that the directory locations will change. The juxtaposition of the forward and backward slashes between Windows and LINUX is also problematic. If an interface was written to use a database directory or the path was parameterized, then the interface should not have any issues. The primary area of concern is when a developer hard codes a directory path, such as E:\Data. We were also looking to standardize the location of the interface code. Most of the code is location on the database but some SQL code exists on the application server as well. The reason for this is that we outsourced most of the interface development during the implementation. We did not have standards during the first year of implementation. We will move any SQL on the application server to the database.

The second area of concern is our auxiliary third party applications. We use RightFax for Purchas Orders and Secure Check. Vertex is used to calculate taxes. We are concerned that some of these applications may not perform correctly. We also use Discoverer and EIS for BI.

The final area of concentration is regarding reports. Since we have been on Windows, we have had the benefit of a rich user interface. It's been a while since I have worked in a UNIX environment but I have memories (and nightmares) of managing fonts on UNIX. Approximately, half of our custom reports have been converted to BI Publisher. I anticipate fewer issues with these reports as opposed to the Reports 6i objects.

Last week, our DBA consultant released the environment for us to start testing and development. Here is a brief analysis of what is broken and what survived the conversion process:

Discoverer 4i: The Desktop version is fine, but the Viewer and Plus versions do not work.

Vertex: The conversion process did not change the dlls and exe files.

EIS: No issues.

Interfaces: We have a total of 59 interfaces. 7 appear to have a hard coded directory path that will need to be changed.

Procurement Punch Outs: We are having issues with the certificate and path locations.

Reports: We initially had an issue with the Oracle Report Toolkit. This was quickly repaired and all reports seem to be operating correctly.

Printers: All of the network printers had to be re-installed and the network path changed.

We discovered that our bank's cash reconciliation program only works on Windows.

We have more work to do next week to create server directories in preparation for interface testing. From a management/development standpoint, the most significant LOE has been in the interface area. I will save that for another post.

First Issue With Office 2010 64 Bit

I chose to install the 64 bit version of Office when I installed Office 2010. It does not install automatically, you have to locate the 64 bit version on the installation DVD. I was warned that 64 Bit Office may not work with add on applications. I have had good luck up to this point but I ran into an incompatible program yesterday. Oracle has not certified the Business Intelligence Desktop plug in with the 64 bit version of Office 2010. Steven Chan's blog claims that Office 2010 64 bit is in the certification process. BI Desktop works fine with 32 bit Office 2010.

North Texas K12 GIS Symposium Afterthoughts

I attended a K12 GIS Symposium hosted by Coppell ISD this past Friday. I was hoping to find other school district personnel who were using GIS in their back office administration applications. I came away a bit disappointed and proud at the same time. No one was using GIS in the HR and Facilities area. We were told that Forsythe County in Georgia is using this technology in a similar innovative manner.

GIS in K12 can be divided into two major camps. The first camp involves integrating the technology in the classroom, primarily in Geography. One presenter shared that the Department of Labor estimates a 20% growth rate in Geospatial professions by 2018. I think the profession is still a bit of a niche but it is growing. Most of the symposium attendees were interested in the classroom application. In fact, the symposium's second day was focused on the classroom application of GIS technology.

The other major camp of K12 GIS users is in administration. In particular the areas of Transportation, Facilities Management and Demographics are the departments most likely to use GIS technology. I would add HR and Finance to the mix as well, but those areas require a strong ERP or database system as a prerequisite. According to a couple of the presenters, Transportation has the greatest potential to deliver the most cost savings. A representative from US Computing claimed that Transportation departments can save 25%-50% of their costs by utilizing GIS technology. I believe this number could be on the high side since many districts are utilizing tiered bus routing and other strategies. However, utilizing the same routing strategies as FEDEX and UPS would seem to reap some benefit.

Personally, I believe that GIS demographics will yield the greatest strategic benefit. Issues such as attendance, ethnicity balance, academic achievement and a myriad of other areas could be studied. According to one presenter, Detroit Public Schools is using GIS demographics to determine which schools to close. Pittsburgh Public Schools has employed a similar strategy. We are using a combination of demographics and building plans for space utilization planning. I was introduced to a new term at the symposium, the micro-environment. Traditional GIS is concerned with large areas. However, building drawings can be imported into ArcGIS and analysis performed at the room level. This is a major initiative of our Facilities Department. Converting the building diagrams is a complex process that I can hopefully cover in a future post.

Overall, it was a good symposium and it is refreshing to see school districts picking up this technology. Adoption should see considerable cost savings in transportation and campus planning. One administrator at Garland ISD noted that mistakes in estimating enrollment costs $50,000 per mistake. For me personally, GIS is another tool to add to my BI toolbox. I am not sure that GIS has reached a tipping point to where a professional can specialize in the area. There are a few positions out there, but most organizations have not formed a GIS strategy or department. It is most frequently used in an ad-hoc manner. One speaker confirmed this observation by stating that 10% of GIS users are full time specialists. The other 90% of the user community utilize GIS in a complementary manner to other duties.

Battle Rhythm of Oracle

When I was working as a staff officer, a key concept that constantly came up was that of a battle rhythm. For the unfamiliar, the term seems to be a bit strange. I believe the only organization with more terminology that IT is the military. I may be treading into dangerous territory by combining the two cultures but I learned quite a bit from my time with the military and I try to apply some of the concepts to the IT profession.

Supporting Oracle Applications 11i is one of our team's primary missions. I am frequently asked the question, "What do you do in a typical day". IT is difficult to explain to people who are not actively engaged in profession. I often find myself drifting towards other IT professionals at parties and other social events because we speak the same language. Explaining the operational support requirements of an ERP system is even more difficult. Since military staffs are used to working in a complex environment, I decided to apply to battle rhythm concept to the Oracle 11i operational environment.

I need to clarify what battle rhythm is before getting too much further. A battle rhythm is basically a schedule of important recurring events. The twist is that a battle rhythm typically includes subordinate, peer and parent units. The concept is to create a schedule where all of the related units (departments) are in synch with each other. Also, there is typically a plan and execute dimension to the concept. While one unit is planning, the other one is executing. Militarily speaking, units gain great advantage by compressing their battle rhythms as much as possible. This allows them to respond and react much faster than their opponents. While most organizations do not have a need to operate at such a high tempo, the organization discipline is important for other reasons, see the benefits section at the end. I found a great definition and example on Globalsecurity.org.

Once again the term "battle rhythm" describes those events that a unit conducts on a recurring basis that facilitates setting the conditions for success. Many factors help determine and establish a unit's battle rhythm. Some of these factors are your unit's state of training, the battle rhythm of your higher headquarters, and your current mission. Your battle rhythm must remain flexible. Some missions require much more time and effort to plan and prepare for than others. Additionally, your battle rhythm cannot be so inflexible that you fail to react to targets of opportunity as they present themselves on the battlefield.

With Oracle Applications, the main support requirement is patching. We have to patch constantly. It is a common and recurring task. Patching comes in two forms; regular updates and bug fixes. The regular updates include quarterly CPUs (critical patch updates), annual legislative updates and Vertex tax updates.

For our organization, we have two full time DBAs and one QA resource whose main job is patching. We have a large 11i footprint including HR, Financials, Project Management and several self-service applications. I took a quick review of our patching effort over the last 12 months and discovered that we applied 175 patches and repaired 13,452 bugs. These numbers should be multiplied by three since we have three non-production environments for testing and QA. As a rule of thumb, we apply at least one patch a day. If we can get a handle on the patching, then we should be able to free up more time for "targets of opportunity" such as development or emergent bug fixes.

I reviewed all of our patching tasks and applied the battle rhythm concept to our department. The chart below is my first stab at defining a battle rhythm for Oracle Applications 11i:

Daily
0900	Review and terminate latent sessions
1100	Place new patches in non-production environments
Weekly
Monday	Review and stage patches slated for production
Tuesday	Migrate patches to production
Thursday	Staff Meeting to discuss emergent requests
Monthly
Week 1	Clone and refresh Development
Week 2	Clone and refresh Test
Week 3	Clone and refresh QA, review monthly Vertex update
Week 4	Review scheduled concurrent requests, verify archive and purge activities, review Vertex tax update
Annual
January	Apply CPU
April	Apply CPU
July	Apply CPU
October	Analyze year end legislative HR patch, install in non-production environments, apply CPU, review PEIMS program
December	Install year end legislative HR patch to production

 

The Benefit: There are several benefits to be gained for establishing a battle rhythm. Project managers and team members can accurately schedule times required for system maintenance. Other departments can ensure that their battle rhythms are synchronized with each other. For example, we have an annual financial audit in September and October. We may need to move some of our October activities to another time in order to better support the audit. Another benefit is that we can use our resources more effectively. By understanding exactly what our support requirements are and when they occur, we can more easily level our resources. This type of flexibility would be of tremendous value during a strategic project such as a migration to Oracle Release 12. A constant struggle with projects is resource availability. I have been on both sides of the management fence and I know it is a real struggle when a technical resource has to decide which task they are required to complete. My experience as a project manager has led me to believe that that resource overloading is a major contributor to project failure. Another benefit of establishing a battle rhythm is that organizations can shift support work to external resources and free up internal resources for more strategic targets and opportunities.