JU LY/AUGUST 200 6

O RACLE.COM/ORAC LE M AGAZIN E

Oracle Enterprise Manager

Brings Order to Your Grid

GROWING RETAIL
BUSINESSES /44
ID MANAGEMENT
OPENS DOORS /49
ARCHIVING
XML /73
07
 2005 Fujitsu Limited. All rights reserved. Fujitsu, the Fujitsu logo, PRIMEQUEST and TRIOLE are registered trademarks or trademarks of Fujitsu Limited in the
United States and other countries. All designations used in this document may be trademarks, the use of which by third parties for their own purposes could

Combining dynamism with

violate the rights of the trademark owners. Changes in design and technology are reserved.

Twice the value with TRIOLE strategy and PRIMEQUEST servers

Successful business processes are adaptable by nature, which is why they are always rooted in dynamic
IT infrastructures. Our TRIOLE strategy leverages the latest virtualization, integration and automation
technologies for maximum flexibility and efficiency. Combine this with our fault-immune PRIMEQUEST
server supporting both Windows and Linux and you have a winning combination: a dynamic infrastructure
ideal for mission critical levels of high availability, scalability and business continuity.

Inject more dynamism into your IT infrastructure. Provide rock-solid stability to your mission critical
enterprise applications.

www.fujitsu.com www.fujitsu-siemens.com
 www.prodesign.de
h stability.
Thats our responsibility.
 CONTENTS VOLU M E XX, I SSUE 4

F EATUR ES

BREWING
Good Business

GET Green Mountain Coffee

 CONTROL
Roasters used a
complementary blend of
Oracles PeopleSoft products
to manage their operations.
Complex enterprise grid
Then they watched their revenues take off.
environments require tools
that can manage both the
Michael Miley
/41
system and the bottom line.
Read how customers have ORACLE HELPS

adopted enterprise grid RETAIL BUSINESSES

technology, improved GROW
service quality, and
Detail-driven retailers are
contained management
carving out competitive
costs with Oracle
advantages by focusing on
Enterprise Manager.
customer dataand Oracle

/44
David Baum
makes it happen. Alan Joch

/32 ACCESS

GRANTED
Cover: I-hua Chen

A PREVIEW OF ORACLES Identity management has become

BIGGEST CUSTOMER EVENT YET critical for organizations as IT
Get the scoop on Oracle OpenWorld systems become more complex.
2006, including keynotes, programs Find out how Oracle can help
for DBAs and developers, technology companies increase productivity,

/13
presentations, and more. manage access, lower
administrative costs, and
achieve regulatory compliance.

DE PAR T M E NTS
David Kelly, with David Baum /49
From Our Readers / 9
Readers tell us what they think.
From the Editor / 11
14 AT OR AC LE
Events / 14
OTN Community Bulletin / 20
Learn whats happening with Oracles most
Collaboration travels. dynamic online community.
Find out about upcoming
Tom Haunert
conferences and training. Oracle News Briefs / 23
Oracle Resources / 19 Oracle News / 25
Heres your guide to Oracles Oracle Business Intelligence Suite combines
broadband, education, and Oracles business intelligence middleware
online offerings, plus whats with Oracles Siebel Business Analytics.
new at Oracle.
ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 3
 26 CH A NNEL S
Partner News / 26

69
Sun Microsystems, Novell, Kashya,
Fiserv Customer Centered Solutions,
i-flex solutions, Neusoft, Siemens VDO, TEC HNOLOGY
BearingPoint, IBM
S QL
Book Beat / 26
Build Custom Aggregate Functions / 69
Peer-to-Peer / 29 Summarize data in new ways by writing your own aggregate
Mikhail Seliverstov, Lewis Cunningham, functions. Jonathan Gennick
Laurent Schneider
Cutting Edge / 31 X ML
Better bifocals, bigger flash drives, and Archiving Data Using XML / 73
open source PBX
Build a powerful, flexible data archive. Arup Nanda

AS K TOM
On Speeding, Dating, and Spelling / 77
Our technologist finds the OS, makes things appear faster,
dates clients, and spells out numbers. Tom Kyte

INS IDE OC P
Managing Certificates / 81
Questions and answers on managing and using certificates
and wallets Aradhana Puri

55 D EVEL O PER
F RA MEWO RKS
A New Face on the Block / 55
Oracle ADF offers new JSF support and enhanced, visual,
declarative development. Steve Muench
84 R ES OUR C ES
Oracle Certified Advantage Partner
Index / 84
O D P.NET
Advertisers Index / 86
Improve ODP.NET Performance / 59

87
Take advantage of connection pooling, fetch size controls,
and statement caching. Mark A. Williams
C OMMENT
B RO WSER-B A SED
IN THE FIELD
Single-Step Deployment / 63
XML in Databases / 87
Oracle Application Express deploys an application with a
XMLs usefulness multiplies with proper handling.
single file. Raj Mattamal
Ari Kaplan

PL / SQ L PRA CTI CES

ANALY S T S C OR NER
On Conditional Compilation / 65
Evolving Grid Management / 88
Apply best practices to PL/SQL conditional compilation.
Increased complexity has led to more-intelligent
Steven Feuerstein
and more-automated system tools.
David Baum

4 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
 When information
comes together,
Toyota can build a
faster car in two weeks.

Information lives at Toyota Motorsport. With the help of EMC, they raced into Formula 1 contention. A combination of EMC software, services,
and systems enabled them to access performance-critical data faster and easier. So now the team can reengineer their car between races.
Manage information at 240-plus miles per hour. And continuously improve their car and their results. Learn how EMC can help you turn your
information into a competitive advantage. Visit www.EMC.com/ilm.

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EMC, EMC, and where information lives are registered trademarks of EMC Corporation. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. 2006 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.
 ED ITOR IA L

Editor in Chief Tom Haunert tom.haunert@oracle.com

Senior Managing Editor Caroline Kvitka caroline.kvitka@oracle.com
Features Editor Kay Keppler kay.keppler@oracle.com
Contributing Editor and Writer Blair Campbell
Editor in Chief, OTN Justin Kestelyn justin.kestelyn@oracle.com
Technology Advisors Tom Kyte, Christopher Beck
Contributing Writers Marta Bright, Liz Campbell, Ed DeJesus, Jeff Erickson, Andre Kvitka,
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Your corrections, your opinions, and your requests:
Heres your forum for telling us whats right and
wrong in each issue of Oracle Magazine, and for
letting us know what you want to read.
BEGINNING WITH BEGINNERS
I regularly receive Oracle Magazine. Im
a beginner, and I want to learn how
to make use of Oracle Database, but I
cant find a vivid tutorial for beginners
in the magazine. I suggest you create
a space in Oracle Magazine that offers
beginners more insight on how to start
using the database.
Yomi Johnson Oyeyemi
skynetscom@yahoo.com
I really appreciate Oracle Magazine.
However, Im new to Oracle, so Id like
you to add a section to the magazine for
beginners like me.
Mohd Said
moh708@yahoo.com
STILL ON ORACLE9i
Ive been an Oracle Magazine subscriber
for the past two years, and it gives me
great pleasure to say that I have never
once missed an issue. You guys are right
on the money!
However, as a PL/SQL developer and
database administrator, I would like to
see two to three articles on Oracle9i
Database, because in India we are still
using Oracle9i and are likely to continue
using it for some time to come. Starting
with a couple of technical articles on
Oracle9i would be an immense help.
Jalpan Pota
jalpan_pota@rediffmail.com
JOYFUL SURPRISE
I wish to express my joy over the release
of Oracles free starter database [Oracle
Database 10g Express Edition].
Im a Java developer with a special
f r o m o u r READERS
interest in database management.
Recently I switched to Oracle JDeveloper
as my IDE, and I have since been
considering using Oracle Database to
manage my data. Oracle Database 10g
Express Edition came just in timeit
appears as if Oracle knew what my
needs were.
Who says Oracle doesnt support
newbies?
Kenny Osanaiye
ken_bellars@yahoo.co.uk
RULES AND EXPRESSIONS
Im a regular reader of Oracle Magazine,
and Im interested in exploring two
new features in Oracle Database 10g:
Rules Manager and Expression Filter. I
havent come across any books (with the
exception of the manual) or articles on
this topic on Oracle Technology Network
or in Oracle Magazine.
Publishing articles on this topic
would be greatly appreciated.
Zahir Mohideen
mfzahir@gmail.com
For more information on these features,
consider using Oracles new search
product, Oracle Secure Enterprise Search
10g (see Oracle Briefs, page 23, and
OTN Community Bulletin, page 20).
You can use Oracle Secure Enterprise
Search to search for two Oracle white
papersOracle Database 10g: Handling
Application Events with Rules Manager
and Oracle Database 10g Expression
Filter Overview. In addition, you can read
Jonathan Gennicks May/June 2005 Oracle
Magazine article on Oracle Expression
Filter at oracle.com/technology/oramag/
oracle/05-may/o35sql.html.
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BACK UP ON BACKING UP
I want to request that you include an
in-depth article on backing up an Oracle
databaseand in a manner that a begin-
ner can understand. Could you please
cover situations like copying a database
from one computer to another when
the computers are not connected? This
process involves complex steps that only
a database administrator can do.
Rohit Prakash
rohitprakash123@indiatimes.com
PL/SQL, PLEASE
Id like to recommend an Oracle
Magazine section providing PL/SQL case
studies. One case study could cover how
to implement transactions in PL/SQL, a
second could cover using the procedures
in the SYS.DBMS_DEBUG package, and
a third could cover effective comment
style in PL/SQL objects.
Tarun Garg
tarun.akg@gmail.com
CORRECTION
We regret misspelling the name of Oracle
Certified Advantage Partner IT&C (incor-
rectly listed as T&C) in our May/June 2006
issue. The error has been corrected (see
Certified Advantage Partner Index, page
84). The Editors
send mail to the EDITOR
Send your opinions about what you read in Oracle
Magazine, and suggestions for possible technical
articles, to opubedit_us@oracle.com.
Or click on the Write the Editors link on our Web
site, oracle.com/oraclemagazine.
Letters may be edited for length and clarity and
may be published in any medium. We consider
any communications we receive publishable.
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 9
2006 Quest Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Quest and Quest Software are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quest Software.
All other brand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. TOAD-teaser-OracleMag_Q32006.

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Collaboration Travels
It isnt always easy, but collaboration is almost always worth the effort.
s a writer and editor, nothing Ive written or edited for
print has ever been a one-person job. Most content in
Oracle Magazine, for example, gets edited or proofed
by 6 to 10 people, and oftentimes an editor or proofer
will ask for significant changes. While these changes may not be
welcome by the author at first, in most cases theyre appreciated
by all by the end of the production cycle.
Collaboration is a key part of processes at Oracle Magazine
and, of course, at Oracle. Product development at Oracle, for
example, is a collaboration of thousands of people. The text,
audio, and video content on Oracle.com, Oracle Technology
Network (OTN), and Oracle Partner Network is the result of
collaboration across Oracle employees, partners, customers,
industry experts, and more. Online forums demonstrate
collaboration, and events such as Oracle OpenWorld (OOW)
and Oracle users group meetings and conferences bring Oracle
people, partners, and customers together in person.
GETTING TO COLLABORATE
I attended Collaborate 06 in Nashville, Tennessee, this past
April. After attending many OOW conferences, this was my
first time at a users group conference, and I enjoyed the
experience of meeting with Oracle partners and customers
face-to-face.
The process of getting to Collaborate 06, however, was a bit
more collaborative than I ever would have anticipated.
By complete coincidence, I was on a Sunday flight to
Chicago with two coworkers, and we were all booked on the
same connecting flight from Chicago to Nashville. But the
connecting flight was cancelled, and there were no seats on
any flights from Chicago to Nashville for the rest of the day.
According to the first ticket agent we talked to, there were no
seats to Nashville available until Tuesday, and the standby lists
for flights to Nashville were quite long.
As we waited for the first Nashville standby opportunity, we
met up with a fourth coworker. He had missed a flight and was
CHECK out
Oracle OpenWorld 2006
oracle.com/openworld
Oracle Users Groups
oracle.com/technology/community/user_groups
OTN Discussion Fourms
forums.oracle.com
f r o m t h e EDITOR
supposed to be with us on the same cancelled flight to Nashville.
And then he proposed the idea of driving to Nashville.
We all needed to be at the same meeting early Monday
morning, and there was no time to reschedule. Driving was the
only way to make sure all of us made it on time.
It didnt seem to be a sensible idea at first, partly because I
had already been awake for 14 hours, but waiting in Chicago
for up to two days for a flight didnt make much sense either.
So after a lot of debate, we all drove to Nashville. The trip took
about eight hours, and we arrived at 3 a.m. Monday.
We talked the whole driveabout work, and about other
things. I needed to give a presentation on Monday, and I know
that the discussions on that drive improved my presentation.
Another result of my Nashville drive was that I got about
three hours sleep that night and was exhausted for many days.
But driving was absolutely the best alternative for us as a group.
GETTING HOME
On the flight home from Nashville (yes, I flew), I sat next to an
Oracle customer who had been at Collaborate 06. Several years
ago, his company had deployed an applications stack (that was
later acquired by Oracle), and there was some consensus that it
was time to upgrade the stack. This customer was at Collaborate
06 to get more information about the true costs and benefits of
the upgrade, and after the conference he was confident that the
upgrade was worthwhile based on the new technology.
But the costs he talked about were harder to quantify. The
previous application deployment had been difficult, and people
at his company were not looking forward to another deployment
like the last one. This customer wanted information from people
who had done the upgrade or knew what was involved to find
out how the upgrade would affect his people. My understanding
was that after getting information at Collaborate 06, he felt confi-
dent that the benefits outweighed the costs of the upgrade.
LOOKING FORWARD
Im looking forward to OOW in San Francisco, October
2226, 2006. Its going to be the biggest OOW ever, I dont
need to fly, and my drive will be much shorter than it was
for Collaborate 06.
Ive sent this column out for review and input some excellent
changes. Im now looking forward to collaborating on the next
column and the next issue of Oracle Magazine.
Tom Haunert, Editor in Chief
tom.haunert@oracle.com
ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 11
 Anytime

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Oracle OpenWorld Special Section

Scheduled Keynote Presenters

Monday, October 23
Charles Phillips
MORE INFORMATION. MORE INSPIRATION. MORE RESULTS.
President
Oracle October 2226, 2006 | Moscone Center | San Francisco
Oracle OpenWorld 2006 promises to be the biggest Oracle event everwith
Hector de J. Ruiz
Chairman of the Board more than 40,000 attendees, 1,400 sessions, and nearly 500 exhibitors.
and CEO Featuring informative workshops, keynote presentations, and practical training
AMD
for all solutions in the Oracle portfolio, Oracle OpenWorld is the premier event for
Michael Dell
Chairman of the Board the Oracle community. Get hands-on instruction from Oracle experts. Get access
Dell Inc. to hundreds of Oracle partners. Get connected to your peers and build your
business network. Get better results from your enterprise technology.
Tuesday, October 24 Oracle OpenWorld 2006 Highlights
John Wookey Technology-specific presentations: Whether you run Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracles
Senior Vice President
Applications Siebel CRM, Oracles PeopleSoft HRMS, or Oracle Retail applications, Oracle OpenWorld has
Oracle sessions, training, demos, and presentations for all your Oracle solutions.
Oracle OpenWorld X-Treme: Join us for an intense program designed for database
Mark Hurd
CEO and President administrators and implementers. Attend X-Treme hands-on labs designed by Oracles
HP development team to gain in-depth technical insight into Oracle products.
Develop: Get the latest information on Oracles use of leading development technologies
John Chambers Java, .NET, XML, service-oriented architecture, scripting, and moreat this three-day
President and CEO program for developers.
Cisco Special JD Edwards Program: Attend conference sessions designed specifically for JD
Edwards World and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne customers.
Customer Appreciation Event: The legendary Sir Elton John will entertain attendees at the
Wednesday, October 25 biggest party in Oracle OpenWorld history.
Chuck Rozwat
Senior Vice President
MARQUEE
Oracle

Jonathan Schwartz
President and CEO DIAMOND PREMIER
Sun Microsystems

Larry Ellison
CEO GRANDE PLATINUM
Oracle

To learn more and to register go to: oracle.com/openworld

Preregister for the Full Conference: US$2,050 (August 19October 20) | On-site registration: $2,250
Register by August 18 and save an additional US$200.

ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 13
 a t O r a c l e EVENTS

Technology Events ORACLE USERS

GROUPS
Greater Cincinnati Oracle User Group
Conferences and training to help you stay on the cutting edge Meeting
July 19, Cincinnati, Ohio
www.gcoug.org
LinuxWorld Greater Richmond Oracle Users Group
Conference & Expo Meeting
August 1417, San Francisco July 19, Glen Allen, Virginia
Find world-class, comprehensive www.groug.org
(Group also meets August 16.)
educational and technical programming
on Linux and open source technology at Ohio Oracle Users Group Quarterly
LinuxWorld. Discover the latest stable, Meeting
deployable open source technologies; July 19, Columbus, Ohio
brainstorm on the deployment, www.ooug.org
integration, and extension of open
Packerland Local Users Group Meeting
source technologies; and explore the full
July 19, Green Lake, Wisconsin
range of products and services around
www.wi-plug.org/calendar.htm
Linux and open source solutions. Learn
more at www.linuxworldexpo.com. Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
Meeting
July 19, Seattle area, Washington
Oracle Technology Day The European Conference on www.psoug.org
July and August, various cities IT Management, Leadership, (Group also meets August 16.)
Attend Oracle Technology Day and learn how and Governance Sacramento Oracle Users Group
you can have a complete infrastructure for July 1213, Paris Meeting
service-oriented architecture (SOA)based Conference topics include the relation- July 19, West Sacramento, California
applications, using Oracle Database 10g, ship between leadership, management, www.sacoug.org
Oracle Fusion Middleware, and Oracle and bureaucracy; sustainable IT leadership; Indiana Oracle Users Group Meeting
Enterprise Manager software. For more infor- relationships between CIOs and CEOs; per- July 20, Indianapolis, Indiana
mation and to register, go to oracle.com/start formance measurement; best practices in www.inoug.org
and enter keyword: otdsoa. IT leadership; and justifying IT investments. Kansas City Oracle Users Group
Register at www.academic-conferences Quarterly Meeting
July 25, Overland Park, Kansas
The Campus of the Future: A .org/ecmlg/ecmlg2006/ecmlg06-home.htm.
www.kcoug.org
Meeting of the Minds
July 811, Honolulu, Hawaii Gartner IT Security Summit Northern California Oracle Users
Group Conference
The three leading higher education associa- July 1819, Sydney, Australia August 17, San Ramon, California
tionsthe Association of Higher Education Evaluate emerging technologies and future www.nocoug.org
Facilities Officers, the National Association trends in information security, and learn about
Upstate New York Oracle Users Group
of College and University Business Officers, disaster recovery and business continuity plan- Quarterly Meeting
and the Society for College and University ning from peers and vendors at this conference. August 18, Rochester, New York
Planningmeet to explore the trends, chal- Learn more at www.gartner.com/2_events/ www.unyoug.org
lenges, and advancements anticipated for the conferences/sec2a.jsp. Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group
Campus of the Future. Learn more at www Quarterly Educational Workshop
.campusofthefuture.org. Eighth Annual CIO 100 August 18, Denver, Colorado
www.rmoug.org
Symposium & Awards Ceremony
Hotsos Training Sessions August 2022, Coronado, California
July 1114, Dallas, Texas Leaders in the CIO community will explore how
July 1820, Atlanta, Georgia to develop, implement, and capitalize on innova- eventsLOCATOR
July 2428, Dallas, Texas tion in formal sessions, small discussion groups, Oracle Events
oracle.com/events
Hotsos presents training classes on and structured and unstructured networking
RON SELLERS

Optimizing Oracle SQL at these three-day opportunities. CIO 100 Awards will be pre- Locate user groups by using OTN
oracle.com/technology/community/
sessions. Learn more and sign up at www sented. To learn more or to register, visit www user_groups
.hotsos.com. .cio.com/conferences/home.html?ID=1143.

14 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
 Special Advertising Section
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From ultra-dense server blades to a complete line of
affordable rack and tower servers, the HP ProLiant DL145 2 1U 16GB
platform continues to set the standard for reliability and DL385 2 2U 32GB
value. And HP continues to work closely with AMD to
DL585 4 4U 128GB
handle greater workloads with increased value and
flexibility for scale-out database applications. In addition, BL25p 2 96* 32GB
HP systems management software works seamlessly with BL35p 2 196* 16GB
Oracle software to simplify grid administration and optimize
BL45p 4 96* 64GB
performance. For example, HP OpenView Operations is
*indicates number of processors in a 42U rack
integrated with Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid
Control, providing a broad range of management
capabilities all based on a common view of management
to support changing business requirements. And with
data. Its no wonder that Technology Business Report (TBR)
management built in to every component, server blades can
found HP customers to consistently rate manageability as
identify the location of all resources connected to the
a strength of HP ProLiant servers.5
intelligent infrastructure and facilitate advanced monitoring,
HP offers a full line of AMD Opteron processor-based control, and change.
HP ProLiant DL servers that are flexible and easy to
With their outstanding scalability and extensive memory
manage, making them ideal for multi-server deployments
capacity, AMD Opteron processor-based HP ProLiant
in rack and cluster configurations. In addition, the
servers and server blades offer ideal flexibility, performance,
modular HP BladeSystem with HP ProLiant BL server
and economy for a wide range of Oracle environments.
blades provides the ultimate in integrated, high-performance
capabilities for grid environments, with the AMD Opteron
processor providing power management capabilities to 3
Source: HP internal shipment reporting and IDCs. Worldwide Quarterly
keep infrastructure costs under control. As shown in the Server Tracker, May 2005.

TPC-H benchmark cited above, HP ProLiant server blades

4
IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, May 2005, combining
historical HP and Compaq results before the merger.
built on AMD Opteron processors and running Linux
can achieve record-setting performance results.
5
TBR Corporate IT Buying Behavior & Customer Satisfaction Study:
Intel-Based Servers; First Quarter 2005, May 3, 2005.
 Special Advertising Section

The choice of platform for this environment is critical.

Servers must scale with virtually no limit and be able
to support large database implementations. They must
deliver the performance to meet enterprise-wide
business demands. They must fit into the data center
environment in terms of power usage and cooling
requirements. And they must be affordable as well as
easy to manage.

HP and AMD set

Oracle 10g with HP ProLiant servers built on AMD Opteron
processors not only meets these requirements, but exceeds
them. In fact, two recent TPC-H benchmarks placed HP
the standard for ProLiant at the top of the 300GB clustered performance
category. These benchmarks were performed using a cluster
grid performance of eight HP ProLiant BL25p server blades, each configured
with AMD Opteron processors and running Red Hat
Getting the most from a grid computing environment
Enterprise Linux ES 4 with Oracle Database 10g Real
depends largely on infrastructure components. One of
Application Clusters.
the fundamental design concepts of commercial grid
computing is using large numbers of industry-standard The first benchmark, conducted using the Single-Core
servers. This allows consolidation of multi-tier applications AMD Opteron processor Model 252 (2.6GHz),
onto a centrally managed environment employing performed at 13,284.2 QphH and $34.20/QphH in the
resource sharing, and deploying a highly available 300GB clustered category. A second benchmark, conducted
scale-out database. using the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor Model
252 (2.4GHz), performed at 18,725.92 QphH and
$27.97/QphHdemonstrating the scalability of this
Table 1 unique processor with a 41% performance gain and
TPC-H 300GB benchmark results with 18% cost saving from single-core to dual-core.1
HP ProLiant BL25p 8p Cluster with (See Table 1.)
Oracle 10g Real Application Clusters
This watershed benchmark establishes the following:
The HP ProLiant BL25p server blade is number one in
performance in the clustered 300GB category, beating
IBM eServer 325 with a configuration that is 48% less
HP ProLiant BL25p server blade expensive. (IBM eServer 325 @ 13194QphH and
$65.44/QppH @ 300GB).2
TPC-H 1 Single-Core AMD Opteron 1Dual-Core AMD Opteron Delta First use of server blades in an Oracle database
Metrics processor Model 252 processor Model 280 cluster benchmark.
(2.6GHz/1MB) per (2.4GHz/1MB) per
BL25p (8 total) BL25p (8 total)

Composite 13284.20 18725.92 +41%

QphH 1
TPC: Results valid as of November 17, 2005. Complete results
can be found at www.tpc.org.
Price/QphH $34.20 $27.97 18%
2
Source: Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC), www.tpc.org
 Special Advertising Section
AMD Direct
Connect Architecture
AMD Direct Connect
Architecture provides an
innovative approach to
system design that further
adds to the capabilities
you can achieve with HP
ProLiant servers in grid
applications by reducing
bottlenecks that can
compromise performance.
With Direct Connect
Architecture, memory is
directly connected to the
CPU optimizing memory
performance, I/O is directly
connected to the CPU for
more balanced throughput
and I/O, and CPUs are
connected directly to CPUs
allowing for more linear
symmetrical multiprocessing.
Find out how HP and AMD can bring true grid computing
for Oracle to your enterprise. Visit www.hp.com/go/oracle.
AMD Opteron processors
driving increased performance
and scalability
The highly efficient design of AMD Opteron processors
is central to enabling industry-leading performance and
scalability in HP ProLiant servers. Single-core and dual-core
AMD Opteron processors with Direct Connect Architecture
integrate key system elements, including AMD64 technology,
integrated DDR DRAM memory controller, HyperTransport
technology, AMD PowerNow! technology, and more.
AMD64 is the innovative technology that allows you to run your
existing 32-bit applications and operating systems at peak
performance, while providing a migration path that is 64-bit
capable. So, you can maintain a single architecture across
32- and 64-bit environments.
The integrated DDR DRAM memory controller changes the way
the processor accesses main memory, resulting in increased
bandwidth, reduced memory latencies, and increased processor
performance. Available memory bandwidth scales with the
number of processors to ensure continued high performance as
you scale out your grid environment.
HyperTransport technology-invented at AMD with contributions
from industry partners-is a high-speed, low latency, point-to-
point link designed to increase the communication speed between
integrated circuits up to 48 times faster than some existing
technologies. HyperTransport technology helps reduce the number
of buses in a system, which can reduce system bottlenecks and
enable todays faster microprocessors to use system memory more
efficiently in high-end multiprocessor systems.
AMD PowerNow! technology with Optimized Power Management
(OPMA) provides performance-on-demand by dynamically
adjusting performance based on CPU utilizationhelping the
systems in a computer grid to run at optimum performance and
power levels, while reducing electricity costs and maximizing
IT budget dollars.
With AMD Opteron processors, you have the ideal
platform to drive high-performance, scalable compute
processing for virtually any size Oracle grid application.
Get it allspeed, quality, and price
Grid computing offers IT organizations tremendous
opportunities to manage rapidly changing and growing
business demands with speed, reliability, and economy.
Working with Oracle, HP and AMD offer the technologies
to capture these opportunities and deliver long-term
value that meets todays IT requirements.
According to Oracle, the formula for grid computing
includes standardizing on affordable, modular servers
and storage, consolidating servers and storage with
Oracle Database 10g and Real Application Clusters, and
automating day-to-day management tasks with Oracle
Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control. With HP ProLiant
servers built on AMD Opteron processors, combined
with the HP management software that is well integrated
with Oracle software, you have the perfect ingredients for
true grid computing that delivers:
Performance and scalability needed to process
rapidly increasing quantities of data
Reliability required to run mission-critical
enterprise applications
Lower total cost of ownership to focus more dollars on
adding business value and increasing profitability
As of November 17, 2005
Source: Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC), www.tpc.org
HP Bladesystem ProLiant BL25p cluster (8 CPUs) with Oracle Database 10g Release 2
with Oracle Real Application Clusters, 13,284.2/QphH @ 300GB, $34.20/QphH
@ 300GB, available 10/31/05. HP BladeSystem ProLiant BL25p cluster (8 DC CPUs)
with Oracle Database 10g with Oracle Real Application Clusters (8 Nodes/8 CPUs/
16 Cores/16 Threads)
18,725.9 QphH @ 300GB, $27.97/QphH @ 300GB, available 11/11/05.
IBM eServer 325 cluster (16 CPUs) with IBM DB2,
13,194.9 QphH @ 300GB, $65.44/QphH @ 300GB, available 11/08/03.
2005 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained
herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and
services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products
and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional
warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions
contained herein.
AMD, Opteron, HyperTransport, and PowerNow! are trademarks of Advanced
Micro Devices, Inc. Oracle is a registered U.S. trademark of Oracle Corporation,
Redwood City, California. Linux is a U.S. registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
 a t O r a c l e RESOURCES
Whats New at Oracle
The latest courses, online content, and more
ORACLE WEBCASTS
Grid Computing and Oracle 10g: Today and
Tomorrow
oracle.com/broadband/showondemand
.html?4458315
Hewlett-Packard, Deloitte Consulting, and
EDS recommend solving major business
challenges with grid computing and the
Oracle 10g platform. Learn how to gain
dramatic competitive advantage with grid
computing today and in the future.
Ensuring Successful User Provisioning
Deployments
oracle.com/broadband/showiseminar
.html?4519446
Identity management experts discuss
real-world deployments, industry best
practices, and implementation strategies.
Oracle Business Intelligence Strategy Briefing
oracle.com/solutions/business_
intelligence/bi_webcast.html
Oracle executives and an IDC analyst
outline Oracles business intelligence
platform and expanded portfolio of analytic
applications, including the integration of
Siebel Business Analytics.
Oracle Fusion Strategy Briefing: Fusion Retail
oracle.com/broadband/showiseminar
.html?4558919
Duncan Angove, general manager, Oracle
Retail, discusses insight-driven retailing.
ORACLE UNIVERSITY
Oracle Database 10g: Performance Tuning
education.oracle.com
(Enter search term: performance tuning.)
Get the most out of your Oracle Database
by learning performance tuning methods
that maximize database productivity.
Students learn how to benefit from Oracle
Database 10g automatic tuning features and
gain practice on manual tuning methods
using the Statspack tool. After clearly defin-
ing the tuning methodologies available, the
course covers the various tunable com-
ponents of an Oracle database. Students
experience hands-on tuning through a
series of exercises.
ORACLE BY EXAMPLE
Managing Your Database Using Oracle SQL
Developer
oracle.com/technology/obe/sqldev/
sqldev.htm
This hands-on tutorial describes how to
use Oracle SQL Developer to manage your
database objects.
Developing and Debugging PL/SQL Using
Oracle SQL Developer
oracle.com/technology/obe/sqldev/plsql_
debug/plsql_debug.htm
In this hands-on tutorial, learn how to
create, run, and debug a PL/SQL procedure
using Oracle SQL Developer.
ORACLE APPCASTS
How Automating the Enterprise Risk
Management Process Helps Organizations
Comply with Regulations
streaming.oracle.com/ebn/podcasts/
applications/4618855.mp3
Adil Khan, client director at Fulcrum
Information Technologies, and Lane
Leskela, Oracles senior compliance
product marketing director, discuss the key
success factors organizations should think
about when implementing a compliance
management strategy.
Transforming Government with ERP Solutions
streaming.oracle.com/ebn/podcasts/
applications/4618856.mp3
Members of Oracles public-sector industry
strategy and marketing team talk about the
issues public-sector managers face today
and how governments can meet these
challenges by using enterprise resource
planning systems.
The Latest Developments with Oracles Report
Tool, XML Publisher
streaming.oracle.com/ebn/podcasts/
applications/4634267.mp3
Rich Colton, application integration
ORACLE MAGAZINE
manager for Washington Group
International (WGI), and Tim Dexter, Oracle
XML Publisher group product manager,
discuss the enterprise release of XML
Publisher, the extraction engine that allows
developers to create reports that access
multiple databases and datasources, as
well as WGIs XML strategy and benefits for
their business applications.
ORACLE NEWSLETTERS
oracle.com/newsletters
Are you getting all the Oracle news you
need to excel? Oracle offers newsletters
on a variety of topics, including .NET and
Java development, Oracle On Demand,
Oracle University, and small-to-midsize
business issues.
For Oracle product information, call the toll-free
number for your region:
Country Phone Number
U.S. and Canada .....................................1.800.367.8674
Australia ....................................................1800.735.467
Austria.......................................................0800.29.7626
Belgium ........................................................0800.73280
China.........................................................800.810.0161
Denmark.........................................................8088.1068
Finland ......................................................0800.113.573
France .......................................................0800.905.805
Germany.................................................0800.1.810.111
Greece.................................................00800.353.12020
Hong Kong......................................................3002.1246
India ..........................................................1600.44.6725
Indonesia...........................................001.800.1.672.253
Ireland ........................................................1850.672253
Italy ..............................................................8008.74720
Japan ........................................................0120.155.096
Malaysia ....................................................1800.80.1837
The Netherlands .............................................0800.0827
New Zealand .............................................0508.555.215
Norway...........................................................800.14411
Philippines........................................................811.5831
Portugal.......................................................800.853.021
Singapore ................................................1800.6722.531
South Africa...............................................0800.994.225
South Korea...............................................080.2194.114
Spain............................................................900.952900
Sweden ........................................................020.798798
Switzerland................................................0800.55.2574
Taiwan.......................................................0800.672.253
Thailand ..............................................001800.441.0545
Turkey .................................................00800.353.90014
U.K. .........................................................0870.5.332200
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 19
 a t O r a c l e RESOURCES
OTN Community Bulletin
The Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g era begins.
QUITE A FIND
In his Oracle OpenWorld Tokyo
keynote address in March, Oracle CEO
Larry Ellison declared Oracle Secure
Enterprise Search 10ga new, stand-
alone search productone of the most
important releases in Oracles history.
Based on Oracles deployment of this
core search technology on its external
Web sites, Oracle Secure Enterprise
Search will be among the highest-profile
products released yet, thats for sure.
In the past, search functionality on
Oracle Technology Network (OTN) was
not always optimal. With Oracle Secure
Enterprise Search, accuracy and user
experience are improved and are now
comparable to what one might see from
a standalone Web-based search engine.
(The Oracle.com deployment does not
currently demonstrate some of the prod-
ucts unique and most interesting capabil-
ities for business intranets, such as secure
crawling and Query Time Authorization.
Oracle Secure Enterprise Search can be
configured such that your search results
include only those documents you have
the authority to see, or that access to
certain documents requires a login.)
As Karri Myles, Oracle.com project
manager for the Oracle Secure Enterprise
Search deployment project, puts it, Web
site users shouldnt have to think about
search. It should be just another site tool
they use to find what theyre looking for,
and it should work the way they expect
it to. In fact, search should work so well
that users choose it first, knowing theyll
find what theyre looking for.
Were confident that Oracle.com/OTN
search now works this wayand this
well. If you disagree, let us know why
in the Member Feedback Discussion
Forum (forums.oracle.com/forums/
forum.jspa?forumID=29).
20 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
For more information about the
product, visit oracle.com/technology/
products/oses (free Linux and Windows
downloads are available) or listen to the
podcast, Oracle Secure Enterprise Search
10g Uncovered, at oracle.com/techcasts.
START YOU UP
Developers interested in getting started
with relatively new technologies such as
Oracle Application Express and Oracle
SQL Developer can now refer to new
Getting Started pages on OTN. These
new pages guide you through the learn-
ing process step-by-step, from down-
loading the right software to finding the
best in-class training.
People who are new to Oracle itself
or even to the DBA role can get a jump
start using the DBA Core Tasks, Security,
and Enterprise Management pages.
And experienced developers investigat-
ing emerging standards such as BPEL,
JavaServer Faces (JSF), and EJB 3.0 can
access Getting Started materials in those
areas as well.
You can view the full range of
Getting Started options at oracle.com/
technology/getting-started.
CONGRATULATIONS, NEW ORACLE ACES
The following individuals were recently
named Oracle ACEs:
O Chris Foot, senior database architect,
Contemporary Technologies (Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania)
O Hans Forbrich, principal, Forbrich
Consulting (Alberta, Canada)
O Nicholas Goodman, business intelli-
gence consultant (Seattle, Washington)
O Jeffrey Hunter, senior DBA, the DBA
Zone (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
O Scott Spadafore, developer, Oracle
Application Express, Oracle
Oracle ACEs are recognized as
BY JU STIN KESTELYN
such by Oracle for their technical pro-
ficiency and eagerness to share their
experiences, whether through writing
books, articles, or blogs; speaking at
events; participating in OTN Discussion
Forums; or simply serving as Oracle
advocates in their respective organiza-
tions. Read their full bios at oracle.com/
technology/community/oracle_ace.
Candidates can be nominated by
anyone in the Oracle technical commu-
nity; nonemployees as well as employ-
ees are eligible. Know an Oracle ACE
candidate yourself? Complete the nomi-
nation form at oracle.com/technology/
community/oracle_ace/nominations.
Justin Kestelyn, OTN Editor in Chief
justin.kestelyn@oracle.com
New Tech Articles, Columns,
& Notes
O
FOR DEVELOPERS:
oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/
tech_dev.html
Using Oracles Built-in Security Features
with PHP
by Mikhail Seliverstov
Take advantage of Oracles native secu-
rity features to improve the security of
your PHP Web applications.
oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/oracle_
php_cookbook/seliverstov-grants-privs.html
Developing Smart Web UIs with Ajax, JSF,
and ADF Faces
by Andrei Cioroianu
Learn how to build rich Web appli-
cations using Ajax techniques along
with JSF and Oracle Application
Development Framework (ADF) Faces.
oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/cioroianu_
jsfajax.html
Standardizing Service Endpoints
by Thomas Erl
Learn how to design service interface
 MOST POPULAR*
Content on OTN
For DBAs/Sysadmins:

definitions that will help you reap the
benefits of standardized service-
oriented architecture.
oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/
erl_wsdl.html
Swing or JavaServer Faces: Which
to Choose?
by Frank Nimphius and Duncan Mills
Are Ajax and JSF the only future for UI
development, or will Swing survive the
Rich Internet Application hype?
oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/nimphius-
mills-swing-jsf.html
Wrapping Your Brain Around Oracle +
Python
by Catherine Devlin
Learn the aspects of Python most impor-
tant for Oracle users.
oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/devlin-
python-oracle.html
Geographic Resources Analysis Support
System (GRASS): More Than a Mapping Tool
by Stephan Holl, Helena Mitasova, and
Markus Neteler
Connecting to an external database
allows you to build sophisticated
geospatial apps with the open source
GRASS GIS tool.
oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/mitasova-
Oracle Database 10g Express Edition: Not
Just for Learners
by Lewis Cunningham
Oracle Database 10g Express Editions
value is not necessarily limited to
novices, students, hobbyists, or small
businessesit also holds appeal for
many other situations, such as testing
what if scenarios in your database or
trying new things.
oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/cunningham-
database-xe.html
Querying, Constructing, and Transforming
XML with Oracle XQuery
by Yuli Vasiliev
Learn how to leverage the power of
the full-featured native XQuery engine
integrated with Oracle Database 10g
Release 2 and find out why Oracle
XML DB provides performance
improvements when processing struc-
tured data.
oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/vasiliev_
xquery.html
New OTN TechCasts (Podcasts)
All OTN TechCasts (podcasts) are available at
oracle.com/techcasts
SQL Developer: Beyond the Command
1. Installing Oracle Database 10g on Linux x86, by
John Smiley
2. Oracle Database 10g: Top 20 Features for DBAs
(series), by Arup Nanda
3. An Introduction to Linux Shell Scripting for DBAs,
by Casimir Saternos
4. Build Your Own RAC Cluster on Linux and FireWire,
by Jeffrey Hunter
5. Oracle Database 10g Express Edition: Not Just for
Learners, by Lewis Cunningham
For Developers:
1. SOA Best Practices: The BPEL Cookbook (series),
by various authors
2. Best Practice PL/SQL (Q&A), with Steven
Feuerstein
3. Build a .NET Application on Oracle Database, by
John Paul Cook
4. Installing PHP and the Oracle 10g Instant Client for
Linux and Windows, by Christopher Jones
5. An Introduction to Java Map Classes, by
Jack Shirazi
*For the two-month period ending March 31, 2006
OTN home
oracle.com/technology

grass.html Line (15 min.) OTN headlines

O
FOR DBAS/SYSADMINS:
oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/
tech_dba.html
Learning Oracle RAC with the NetApp
Simulator
by Sachin Garg
With the help of Network Appliances
Data ONTAP Simulator, any DBA or
oracle.com/technology/pub/news
Director of Database Tools Research
Kris Rice describes the origins and Free software downloads
oracle.com/technology/software
functionality of Oracle SQL Developer,
Documentation
Oracles new (and free) graphical tool oracle.com/technology/documentation
for database developers.
Technology and Developer
Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g Centers
Uncovered (18 min.) oracle.com/technology/tech
Why is Oracle interested in search? How Podcasts
does internet search differ from intranet oracle.com/techcasts

Linux enthusiast who is also a NetApp
customer can evaluate Oracle Real
Application Clusters on Linux with no
up-front hardware investment.
oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/garg-
netapp-simulator.html
search? And what does secure search Technical articles
oracle.com/technology/pub/articles
mean, exactly? Oracle Search Product
Manager Omar Alonso provides some Blogs
blogs.oracle.com
answers, as well as a technical descrip-
Discussion forums
tion of Oracle Secure Enterprise Search forums.oracle.com
architecture and capabilities. O

ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 21
D I D Y O U KNOW
? a t O r a c l e BRIEFS
SERVICE-ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE
CONTINUES GROWTH
Worldwide spending on service-oriented
architecture (SOA)based external services
is predicted to reach US$8.6 billion in 2006,
a 138 percent increase from US$3.6 billion
in 2005. By 2010, global SOA-based services
spending should reach US$33.8 billion. The
Americas will host the majority of external
services spending on SOA, with the United
States leading the market. Europe, the
Middle East, and Africa represents the
second largest region in terms of spending;
however, the Asia Pacific region is expected
to experience the most-rapid growth, mainly
due to its current small base level.
Source: IDC Worldwide SOA-Based Services
20062010 Forecast
www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS20108306
EXECS LAMENT POOR COMMUNICATION
WITH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
In a March 2006 survey of U.S.based
business executives, 74 percent of
respondents said a communication gap
between business and IT cripples their ability
to get mission-critical business systems
to market on time. Eighty percent have
experienced delays in getting to market,
and 52 percent said that new systems get
delivered with missing features. Sixty percent
said that they budget for project delays, and
83 percent budget for cost overruns. Ninety
percent say delivering projects faster to
market would be an important factor in their
competitive advantage and cost control.
Source: iRise
www.irise.com/news/pressrel/pr040306-1.shtml
NEARLY HALF OF BUSINESSES LACK
CONTINUITY PLANS
A survey of more than 5,000 IT professionals
in the United States showed that nearly half
of businesses lack a business continuity
plan, even though more than 45 percent of
companies experienced an IT failure last
year. Hardware and network issues were the
top two reasons cited for IT failures, and 58
percent of the time these failures resulted in
downtime of one to eight hours for business-
critical applications.
Source: Neverfail Group
extranet.neverfailgroup.com/upload/PR%20-
%20Survey%20Release%20-%202006-03-21.pdf
ORACLE FUSION MIDDLEWARE DELIVERS
ENHANCED SUPPORT FOR MICROSOFT
M
any organizations rely on a mix of
vendor technologies throughout
their computing environments, and a
significant number of Oracle Fusion
Middleware customers run on Windows
and deploy Java and .NET-based
applications and services. Oracle has
extended Oracle Fusion Middlewares
support for Microsoft environments,
including Windows, .NET/Windows
Server System, and Microsoft Office.
Oracle has created a best-practices
guide for developers who want to inte-
grate Microsoft Office applications with
enterprise applications by leveraging
Oracle Fusion Middleware. Enterprises
can increase productivity by reducing
duplicate data entry and improve total
cost of ownership by minimizing spe-
cialized training for disparate systems.
We are dedicated to providing our
customers with the markets most exten-
sible, open middleware offering to help
ensure they derive the most value from
their business applications, says Vijay
Tella, vice president and chief strategy
officer, Oracle. Our extended support
for Microsoft strengthens an organiza-
tions ability to leverage Oracle Fusion
Middlewares best-in-class, standards-
based middleware components regard-
less of their Microsoft investments.
ORACLE SECURE ENTERPRISE SEARCH 10g
EASES NETWORK SEARCHES
N ow shipping, Oracle Secure
Enterprise Search 10g is a compre-
hensive, standalone search engine that
enables customers to make critical busi-
ness information available to authorized
users while enforcing corporate security
policies. It delivers high-quality search
results from a range of data sources
including databases, file systems, enter-
prise content management systems,
portals, e-mail systems, and applications.
Tuned for the enterprise, Oracle
Secure Enterprise Search 10g offers
search algorithms that can utilize exist-
ing business metadata to improve the
ORACLE MAGAZINE
relevance of search results. It also fea-
tures a fast installation process, a simple
Web interface for efficient administra-
tion and management, and an easy-to-
use search interface. Additionally, users
can access the search engine through
Web-based user interfaces and perform
traditional keyword searches.
Enterprises have unique search
requirements that differ from those of
consumer search, says Sue Feldman,
research vice president, IDC. Secure
access to multiple repositories, file
formats, data, and content is a necessary
component. So, too, are ease-of-use,
single point of access, and integration
with other major enterprise applications.
As enterprise search becomes more
mission-critical to information-intensive
organizations, they will want it to come
with the same scalability, reliability, and
global support that they now expect
from the rest of their IT infrastructure.
ORACLE DATABASE VAULT TARGETS INSIDER
THREATS AND COMPLIANCE
O rganizations today must adhere to
regulatory requirements such as
Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and a host of
other compliance and privacy regulations
while establishing stronger security pro-
tections, particularly against the insider
threat. Protecting against this threat
means enforcing stricter access controls
on applications and databases from
insiders who, in some cases, have unre-
stricted access, such as database admin-
istrators and other highly privileged
users. Similarly, enforcing separation of
duties among these users to ensure that
they have access only to those applica-
tions they need for performing their job
is key for meeting regulatory compliance
requirements. Oracle Database Vault, a
new Oracle Database security product,
addresses both of these needs.
Oracle Database Vault provides
applications with protections similar to
a bank safe by preventing DBAs from
accessing all applications residing on
a single database. It places strict con-
trols on DBAs by providing flexible and
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 23
BRIEFS
adaptable security controls to specific
application access, restricting access
to only that necessary to perform their
jobs. Historically, organizations have
given the DBA and other superusers
tremendous trust while acknowledging
the potential liability if such superus-
ers prove to be untrustworthy. Oracle
Database Vault removes the risk of abuse
of superuser privileges by introducing
new concepts called realms, factors,
and rules that place incremental restric-
tions on the data a superuser can access,
including contextual parameters such
as time of day or location that further
restrict access. Such controls help orga-
nizations conform to internal policies as
well as security requirements mandated
by regulations.
Oracle Database Vault can be used
with other Oracle Database security
technologies and is planned for avail-
ability before the end of this fiscal year.
ORACLE SECURE BACKUP UNVEILED
N ow available, Oracle Secure Backup
offers high-performance and secure
data protection by encrypting data that
is backed up to offline media. Data
stored in offline devices such as tape is
vulnerable to theft and loss. Encrypting
data as it is copied to tape ensures that
sensitive and critical data is protected
even in the event of theft.
Oracle Secure Backup provides
the industrys most secure tape backup
management for your entire Oracle
environment at the lowest cost, says
Willie Hardie, vice president of database
product marketing, Oracle.
Oracle Secure Backup supports more
than 200 tape devices, from legacy and
popular systems to the latest high-per-
formance tape drives. Oracle Secure
Backup can be controlled and adminis-
tered using Oracle Enterprise Manager
and is available on Windows, Linux,
and UNIX.
LINUX COMMUNITY ENDORSES ORACLE
CLUSTER FILE SYSTEM
O racles enterprise-class cluster file
system, Oracle Cluster File System
Release 2 (OCFS Release 2), will be dis-
tributed with the Linux kernel, provid-
24 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
ing users with an open source alternative
to proprietary cluster file systems.
The endorsement of OCFS 2 by
the Linux community represents a
significant milestone for Oracle and
demonstrates how Oracles continued
contributions are driving adoption of
open source technologies, says Andrew
Morton, Linux 2.6 kernel maintainer.
OCFS Release 2 will be included in
the mainline Linux kernel 2.6.16 and is
already supported on the SUSE Linux
Enterprise platform from Novell and
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.
Designed to work as a seamless addi-
tion to the Linux kernel, OCFS Release 2
eases system management while improv-
ing performance. It enables all nodes in a
cluster to concurrently access a given file
system, allowing for simplified manage-
ment of databases that are shared across
a cluster. OCFS Release 2 also includes
expanded capabilities to run nondata-
base, standard file system operations,
providing additional value as a general-
purpose file management system.
ORACLE CONTENT DB EASES MANAGEMENT
OF UNSTRUCTURED CONTENT
O racle Content DB, a new Oracle
Database 10g Enterprise Edition
option, addresses the challenges of man-
aging unstructured content.
Unstructured contentdocuments,
presentations, spreadsheets, digital
imagesis typically stored in multiple
locations, which makes it difficult to
find, creates uncertainty about the
content source, and impacts user pro-
ductivity. This content also complicates
compliance efforts by requiring policies
to be implemented multiple times for
different environments, and it is at risk
of being lost, nonrecoverable, or falling
into the hands of inappropriate users.
Unmanaged content generates redun-
dant copies, and this proliferation causes
physical storage and management costs
to increase unnecessarily.
Oracle Content DB addresses these
problems by enabling users to easily
store, secure, share, search, and manage
unstructured content in an enterprise-
scalable content repository: Oracle
Database. Unstructured content can
easily be integrated into critical business
processes, and policy constraints such as
access control and document retention
can be applied to help manage discovery
risk and ensure regulatory compliance.
ENHANCED SOA PLATFORM AVAILABLE
O racle has released an enhanced
service-oriented architecture (SOA)
platform that includes new versions of
Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Oracle
Business Activity Monitoring, Oracle
Web Services Manager, and Oracle
Enterprise Server Bus, all components of
Oracle SOA Suite. A new SOA platform
component, Oracle Service Registry, is a
secure registry for publishing, categoriz-
ing and discovering services, and it is
now available in all editions of Oracle
Application Server 10g.
New capabilities focus on three key
areas: human workflow support for
sophisticated task routing, notifications,
and worklists; an enhanced, high-
performance enterprise service bus for
simplified data integration between
IT systems; and greater ease-of-use
for developers and system administra-
tors with enhanced development and
management tools. Other enhance-
ments include hot-pluggable support
for third-party rules engines and a new
testing framework for easier manage-
ment and automation of testing service-
oriented processes. O
Oracle Fusion Middleware and
Microsoft interoperability
oracle.com/technologies/microsoft
Developers guide for Microsoft
Office interoperability
download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B25221_
04/core.1013/b25781/toc.htm
Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g
oracle.com/technology/products/oses
Oracle Database Vault
oracle.com/goto/databasevault
Oracle Secure Backup
oracle.com/security
Oracle Cluster File System
oss.oracle.com/projects/ocfs2
Oracle Content DB
oracle.com/database
Oracle SOA platform
oracle.com/soa
 a t O r a c l e ORACLE NEWS
Business Intelligence Gets Smarter
New suite combines Oracle business intelligence with Siebel Business Analytics
racle is making a major push
into the business intelligence
space with a comprehensive
suite that combines Oracles
business intelligence (BI) middleware
with Oracles Siebel Business Analytics.
Oracle Business Intelligence Suite
addresses the complete spectrum of
BI and analytical requirements facing
customers today, including historical,
real-time, and forward-looking insight,
data integration, and management. This
open, standards-based software enables
customers to extend BI across the enter-
prise to make informed decisions based
on timely, actionable information.
Were integrating a variety of tools
and technologies into a common plat-
form to enable you to tackle all kinds
of business intelligence problems
with a common toolset, says Thomas
Kurian, Oracle senior vice president of
Server Technologies. Today if you use
BI tools from other vendors, they arent
built on a common platform. With a
common platform, they have common
metadata, a common security model,
a common UI, a common way to be
managed, and a unified notion of the
information against which youre doing
all of your calculations. No matter
which tool youre accessing the infor-
mation from, you always get the same
view of the information.
Developed for heterogeneous IT
environments, the Oracle Business
Intelligence Suite allows business users
to collect and analyze information
from Oracle and non-Oracle databases,
including IBM, Microsoft, and Teradata,
and from business applications from
Oracle, SAP, and others. Part of the
Oracle Fusion Middleware product
ERIC OSTLING
family, the suite delivers information
that is hot-pluggable into existing data
sources and operational systems.
Oracle Warehouse Builder, in addition
Thomas Kurian, Senior Vice President of Server
Technologies, Oracle
CHOOSE YOUR BUNDLE
The suite is available in three editions:
Oracle Business Intelligence Suite
Enterprise Edition, Oracle Business
Intelligence Suite Standard Edition,
and Oracle Business Intelligence Suite
Standard Edition One.
The enterprise edition features rela-
tional and online analytical processing
(OLAP) query and analysis for both
Oracle and non-Oracle environments. It
includes ad hoc query and analysis tools;
easy-to-use, thin-client analytic dash-
boards; enterprise reporting and publish-
ing; and real-time alerting. This edition
also supports integration with Microsoft
desktop tools. Oracle Business Intelligence
Suite Enterprise Edition is priced at
US$1,500 per named user.
Aimed at businesses seeking to
complement their existing Oracle invest-
ments, Oracle Business Intelligence
Suite Standard Edition includes Oracle
Business Intelligence Beans for custom
application development; Oracle Business
Intelligence Discoverer for ad hoc query,
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BY C A ROLI NE KVITKA
reporting, and analysis; Oracle Reports,
for enterprise reporting; and Oracle
Business Intelligence Spreadsheet Add-In,
for direct access to Oracle OLAP from
within Microsoft Excel. It is priced at
US$400 per named user.
Targeted at small-to-midsize
businesses and departments, Oracle
Business Intelligence Suite Standard
Edition One, planned for availability
within 12 months, is an integrated BI
offering with all the necessary infra-
structure software and tools to quickly
and efficiently deploy a BI system. This
version is expected to include Oracle
Database 10g Standard Edition One and
to reporting, query, and analysis tools. It
will be priced at US$25,000 for up to 50
users and a maximum of 2 CPUs.
INFUSING BI ACROSS THE STACK
Oracle plans to deliver specific analyti-
cal updates within the next 12 months
by integrating the BI infrastructure
of the suite with Oracles PeopleSoft
Enterprise, Oracles JD Edwards
EnterpriseOne, and Oracle E-Business
Suite applications. Within the same
time frame, Oracle also plans to release
enhanced enterprise performance
management capabilities in PeopleSoft
Enterprise Performance Management
9.0, expanded daily business intel-
ligence features in Oracle E-Business
Suite Release 12, and industry-specific
analytic applications. O
LEARN more about Oracle Business
Intelligence solutions
oracle.com/bi
WATCH the Oracle Business
Intelligence strategy briefing
oracle.com/solutions/business_intelligence/
bi_webcast.html
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 25

b o o k BEAT
The Art of SQL
By Stphane Faroult with
Peter Robson
OReilly Media
www.oreilly.com
ISBN: 0-596-00894-5
Database design can be
likened to a military campaign, contends author
Stphane Faroult, who takes a page from Sun
Tzus classic treatise, The Art of War. In The
Art of SQL, he offers best practices that teach
experienced SQL users to focus on strategy,
rather than specifics. He writes that you need
knowledge, skills, and talent. While talent cant
be taught, strategists from Sun Tzu to modern-
day generals believed it could be nurtured. Just
as generals try to pass on the experience theyve
acquired in the battlefield, Faroult attempts to
apply this method to writing good SQL code.
This book will not turn bad programmers
into good programmers. But I have met many
good, intelligent programmers who ignored
everything [about] databases and whose projects
tottered on the brink of catastrophe because of
their lack of understanding of database issues,
says Faroult. Usually people learn by trial and
error. One of the purposes of the book is to make
good developers leverage their potential at an
earlier stage.
Oracle 10g RAC: Grid,
Services & Clustering
By Murali Vallath
Digital Press Books
www.digitalpressbooks.com
ISBN: 1-55558-321-0
Oracle 10g RAC: Grid,
Services & Clustering
provides a deep knowledgebase for Oracle Real
Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) and helps
readers understand the benefits of scale-out
capabilities using industry-standard components.
The book focuses on current technology including
all valid Oracle RAC features through Oracle
Database 10g Release 2, with a primary focus on
deployments in high-end grid environments.
The book focuses on ASM, operating system
configuration, installation and configuration,
RMAN, and Oracle Backup. Other topics include
network configuration for high availability,
implementation of maximum-availability
architecture, and Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid
Control. The author includes several scripts for
performance tuning and implementation that
the reader can use to configure an Oracle RAC
environment either on a 2-, 4-, 8-, 60-, or 100-
node configuration.
Browse for Oracle books at oracle.com/
technology/books/10g_books.html.
26 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
c h a n n e l s PARTNER NEWS
SUN ADDS SUN CLUSTER ADVANCED EDITION
S
un Microsystems has added Sun
Cluster Advanced Edition for Oracle
Real Application Clusters to the Sun Java
Availability Suite. This addition provides
customers with Oracle Real Application
Clusters on the Solaris 10 OS for US$50
per year per employee. The updated
suite employs a shared file system using
Sun StorEdge QFS software and uses
Solaris Volume Manager for partitioning
and automatic device relocation. Other
features include I/O fencing and tighter
integration with Solaris 10.
Customers in financial, government,
telecommunications, and healthcare
organizations are currently using the
combined Sun/Oracle high-availability
offering. We have worked to certify the
Sun Cluster for Oracle Database 10g and
Oracle Real Application Clusters, so that
our joint customers can feel assured of
. . . integrity and high availability, says
Prem Kumar, Oracle vice president of
Server Technologies.
NOVELL OFFERS SUSE LINUX ACCELERATOR
ON HP, EGENERA
N ovell and Oracle are offering an
Accelerator service to help custom-
ers deploy a grid-ready data center
infrastructure, consisting of Oracle
Database 10g, Oracle Real Application
Clusters, Oracle Application Server 10g,
and Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g on
Novells SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
The offering is available on hardware
platforms from HP or Egenera. Oracle
personnel work with Novell and HP
or Egenera to expedite implementation
and deployment.
KASHYA IMPROVES DATA PROTECTION
K ashya, a supplier of data protec-
tion solutions for the enterprise,
has announced the KBX5000 R2.3
Data Protection Platform, an integrated
disaster recovery and continuous data
protection (CDP) solution. The new
product offers application-aware
integration with Oracle and other
applications, efficient and immediate
recovery at local and remote locations,
and more than 2GB per second of
throughput in high-end configurations.
The KBX5000 enables enterprise
storage administrators to achieve precise
CDP recovery points through event and
environmental history tracking. It jour-
nals and time-stamps every data write
operation, and event-based tags help to
identify known good recovery points
prior to data loss or corruption. It also
supports Oracle recovery point book-
marking. The KBX5000 dynamically
presents the recovery volume for imme-
diate read and write access, providing
instant data recovery with no loss of
transactional data.
Through journal compression,
the KBX5000 delivers increased data
recovery precision while reducing CDP
storage requirements; Kashyas data
reduction technology provides up to 15x
data reduction.
ORACLE EXPANDS PRESENCE IN CHINA, INDIA
O racle has begun expansion into 26
Chinese cities and is recruiting part-
ners to support the needs of midmarket
organizations in key Chinese industries.
These cities, with 2 million to 30 million
in population, house Chinas small-to-
midsize business (SMB) community,
which employs 75 percent of the coun-
trys total workforce and contributes
more than 50 percent of the national
GDP. Our midmarket business has
been one of the key drivers for Oracles
overall business growth in China, says
Roger Li, managing director of Oracle
North China. Oracle will also establish
partnerships with independent software
vendors in these cities.
In India, Oracle will strengthen its
presence in Pune and the region of
Maharashtra as part of its expansion
into nonmetro Indian cities. Oracle has
selected and trained local partners to
meet the needs of small to large orga-
nizations across key industries. The
nonmetro cities are where India is
experiencing some of the highest eco-
nomic growth rates, and Pune is home
 PARTNER SPOTLIGHT Independent Software Vendors Support Oracle RAC

A s of March 2006, 200 solutions from leading indepen-

dent software vendors (ISVs) worldwide have been
validated for Oracle Real Application Clusters, with more
than 7,000 customers currently running their businesses
on Oracles high-availability architecture. The ISVs whose
solutions are validated for Oracle Real Application Clusters
span a range of industries, from consumer packaged goods
and financial services to government and healthcare. Here
are four prominent ISVs:
Fiserv Customer Centered Solutions, a Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvaniabased developer of customer relationship
management solutions for the financial services industry.
By simply adding industry-standard hardware to the envi-
ronment, our application would scale linearly, says John
Puccetti, vice president for product and technology at Fiserv
CCS. This was a significant milestone for our application.
i-flex solutions, a Mumbai, Indiabased provider of IT
products, solutions, and consulting to the financial services
industry, with more than 600 customers in 120 coun-
tries. With Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Real Application
Clusters scalability is enhanced and can offer the processing
power and reliability of mainframe machines in an open
platform at a much lower price, says S. Sundararajan, vice
president of i-flex solutions.
Neusoft, a Shenyang, Chinabased software and solution
provider, serving customers in telecom, insurance, govern-
ment, utilities, and healthcare. We chose Oracle Database
and Oracle Real Application Clusters as the platform of our
mission-critical applications because the technology offered
no single point of failure and capacity on demand, says
Dr. Xia Zhang, chief technology officer and chief knowledge
officer of Neusoft.
Siemens VDO, a Schwalbach, Switzerlandbased inter-
national automotive electronics supplier. Pairing Siemens
VDOs industry-leading transit management technology . . .
with Oracle Real Application Clusters technology enables
our customers to achieve high availability and scalable
expansion for their mission-critical transit fleet tracking
applications, says Richard Palmieri, senior project manager
at Siemens VDO.

to top IT companies, business process
outsourcing companies, engineering
technology, and IT products companies,
says Krishan Dhawan, managing director
of Oracle India.
BEARINGPOINT DELIVERS CORPORATE
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
ingall in the context of a single, inte-
grated data architecture.
BearingPoint helps clients with plan-
ning and benchmarking, process defini-
tion and optimization, analytic design,
software implementation, and training.
ORACLE TO EXPAND INVESTMENT WITH IBM
and Asia. A distribution program will
deliver preintegrated hardware, soft-
ware, and services offerings through
regional solution providers. O
Sun Cluster Advanced Edition
www.sun.com/software/cluster

B earingPoint is offering Corporate

Performance Management solutions
powered by Oracle applications and
FOR JD EDWARDS

I n response to SMB customers continu-

technologies. Corporate Performance
Management leverages Oracle technolo-
gies, such as a robust data warehouse
ing demand for Oracles JD Edwards
EnterpriseOne software on IBM, Oracle
will work with IBM to deliver these
solutions to the SMB market. Increased
Novell Linux Accelerator
oracle.com/technology/consulting/10gServices/
hp.html
oracle.com/technology/consulting/10gServices/
egenera.html
Kashya KBX5000
www.kashya.com/solutions_KBX5000.jsp

and data model, to support business
rules engines and business intelligence
and analytics. Oracles document man-
agement, data extraction strategies,
dashboards, scorecards, and online ana-
lytical processing (OLAP) also support
the solutions, resulting in a consistent
enterprise business process with a
common definition and source of busi-
ness information. This reduces the need
for reconciliation and redundant data
investment from Oracle will support go- Oracle China
oracle.com/cn
to-market activities for Oracle and IBM
sales teams and value-added resellers. Oracle India
oracle.com/in
The companies will provide a one-
stop source for application software, Fiserv Customer Centered Solutions
www.ccs.fiserv.com
middleware, database, hardware, busi-
i-flex solutions
ness and technology consulting, rapid www.iflexsolutions.com
implementation, support services, train- Neusoft
ing, certification, and financing. www.neusoft.com
The increased investment will Siemens VDO
reestablish and augment previously transitmaster.siemensvdo.com

collection, increases insight into enter-
prise performance drivers, and provides
the ability to drill down from strategic to
operational data for analysis and model-
established programs with JD Edwards BearingPoint CPM
www.bearingpoint.com/oraclecpm
and IBM. Regional and country-level
go-to-market efforts will roll out in IBM and Oracle
oracle.com/ibm
North America, then expand to Europe

ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 27
 Take control of your database
applications with SQL Detective 3.4
T O O L F O R E V E RY B O D
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 c h a n n e l s PEER-TO-PEER BY B LA IR CAMPBELL

The Database Guys

Whether its synthpop, securing loans, or Swiss banks, these peers have the solution.
Mikhail Seliverstov happen. Im in Mortgage Services, peerSPECS
Company: HSBC USA, a global
How does your work at McGill help so Im helping the people who make provider of commercial banking
sustain the universitys online the calls trying to get customers to products and services

community? My team is a part refinance, as well the ones filling out Job Title/Description:
Technical consultant, with
of a larger systems team in the customer applications. architecture, analysis, and business
Development, Alumni, and Now that youre using Oracle Database liaison responsibilities
Location: Brandon, Florida
University Relations [DAUR] 10g, what new features are you finding
Oracle Credentials: Oracle-
office, which keeps track of most valuable? My favorites are certified DBA (Oracle9i ) with 13
and provide services to more dbms_output line limit removal, years of experience using Oracle
products
than 250,000 graduates, stu- COMMIT NOWAIT, PL/SQL con-
dents, and donors around the ditional compilation, and Instant
world. One of our flagship projects is the Alumni Online Client Lite. I called Oracle8i the Developers Release because
Community, a large-scale Oracle-driven PHP application that they added so much to PL/SQL. I thought that was the best
helps fellow grads stay in touch with the university and with you could getand then they did it again, with Oracle9i. And
each other. Oracle 10g added so many nice little things that just make life
What technology has most changed your life? I would say PHP easier. I guess its the ease-of-use version.
has had the biggest impact on the way I approach Web proj-
ects. Its very encouraging to see big IT players like Oracle and Laurent Schneider
IBM giving PHP such great support peerSPECS How has Oracle University (OU) helped you earn your various certifi-
these days. Backed by a solid data- Company: McGill University, a cations? In 2001, when I first became involved with a project
publicly funded university offering
base with advanced security fea- degrees in more than 300 fields
using Oracle Database, I took courses
turesthink Oracles Virtual Private of study covering Oracle8 database admin-
Database, for instancethere are Job Title/Description: istration, backup, and tuning. I
Web programming team lead,
few things you cant accomplish. supervising day-to-day Web
passed the OCP [Oracle Certified
Whats your favorite pastime outside development operations Professional] exam the same year,
of work? In my spare time I run a Location: Montreal, Canada and Im hoping to do the same in
little Web-based music directory Length of Time Using Oracle 2006 with Oracle Application Server
Products: 7 years
[www.allsynthpop.com], which 10g. I also used Oracle University
serves as an outlet for my music-related ranting, as well as a Online Learning, through Oracle
sandbox for PHP experimentation and a testing ground for PartnerNetwork, to become an
the technologies Im curious about. Oracle9i Technical Champion.
Tell us about your grid-related responsi- peerSPECS
Lewis Cunningham bilities on the job. For my most recent Company: LC Systems
Engineering AG, a systems
How did you get started in IT? I started as a computer operator project, at a bank in Zurich, Ive integration firm
and got into systems programming on mainframe systems, then been responsible for the implemen- Job Title/Description:
got into PC and client/server using dBase III Plus and became tation of Oracle Grid Control. Ive Management system engineer,
with a focus on database and grid
known as the Database Guy. also implemented and maintained administration
You mention business liaison as Oracle Real Application Clusters for Location: Zurich, Switzerland
part of your job description. What quite a few LC Systems customers Oracle Credentials: Oracle-
does that involve? The business on Solaris and Linux. certified DBA (Oracle8, Oracle8i,
Oracle9i, Oracle Database 10g)
liaison role is one thing that How would you sum up your approach with five years of experience using
really attracted me to my new to your work? Design, performance, Oracle products. First Oracle-
certified master (Oracle9i ) in
job. I get to go find out what and maintenance are long-term chal- Switzerland.
the business side feels theyre lengesthey shouldnt be regarded
missing and then hunt it down as problems. I put a high value on oracle.com/technology/community/
oracle_ace
and make the right things performance and data quality. O

ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 29
 Keeping up with new customers.
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For many of the 40 million Americans Looking to cut telephony costs in your
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through specific portions of a bifocal open source private branch exchange
lens causes dizziness, disorientation, (PBX), or private telephone exchange.
and eye fatigue. So researchers have Asterisk is a complete software-based
developed a prototype that uses liquid PBX. It runs on Linux, Berkeley Software
crystals to change focus in an instant, Distribution, and Mac OS X and provides
preventing the eye strain caused by conventional bifocals. all of the features you would expectand
The glasses change focus using a five-micron-thick layer more. Asterisk does Voice over IP (VOIP)
of nematic liquid crystal, sandwiched between two pieces in many protocols and interoperates with
of glass. Molecules of the liquid crystal reorient them- almost all standards-based telephony
selves when exposed to an electric field, enabling a type of equipment using relatively inexpensive
dynamic Fresnel lens. In a Fresnel lens, concentric rings are hardware. It provides voice mail
carved into a piece of glass, causing light to become focused services with directory, call
in a similar way to a conventional lens. Dynamic glasses conferencing, interac-
mimic this effect using concentric circles of clear electrodes. tive voice response, and
Activating these electrodes causes the liquid crystal to align call queuing. It sup-
into rings and focus light passing through the lens. ports three-way calling,
PixelOptics plans to sell glasses containing dynamic caller ID services,
lenses within two years. The prototype is pretty bulky, Analog Display Services
but when these hit the streets theyll be virtually indis- Interface, Session
tinguishable from other very stylish glasses, says CEO Initiation Protocol, and
Ronald Blum. the H.323 standard. Asterisk
requires no additional hardware
for VOIP and supports a number of hard-
ware devices for interconnection with
Flash Drives Hit 64GB digital and analog telephony equipment,
Today, most of us have more information to storeand more including that manufactured by its spon-
places to store itthan ever. DVDs and dual-layer DVDs offer sors at Digium, Inc.
the ability to store lots of data, but with limits. A DVD stores Digiums Mark Spencer was Asterisks
4.7GB of data, while a dual-layer DVD gives us 8.7GB original author, and open source coders
and at a high price, at least for now. An alternative: the around the world have contributed to it,
flash drive, a pen-size, featherweight USB device com- with testing and bug patches from the
monly found in 1GB or 2GB versions. The beauty community further aiding in its devel-
of the flash drive is its simplicity and portability. opment. Now for the best part: This
You can quickly copy files from your computer to a mission-critical, powerful software is free.
flash drive, and youre ready to take documents,
digital photos, presentations, and more with you.
BUSlink is breaking barriers in storage capacity
with its 64GB-capacity USB 2.0 Flash Drive PixelOptics dynamic bifocals
Pro 2. Although currently pricey, at around www.gravitysedge.com/pixeloptics/home.htm

US$5,000, this key-chain flash drive rep- BUSlink flash drives

www.buslink.com
resents a new dimension in portable storage
and convenience that will appeal to anyone who Asterisk open source PBX
www.asterisk.org
needs to move or share files.

ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 31
 MEANWHILE, AT THE CIOS OFFICE...

GET
MY ENTERPRISE IS OUT OF CONTROL!
I CANT KEEP UP WITH ALL THE NEW SERVERS,
THE SECURITY, THE BACKUPS...
HOW DO YOU DO IT?

BY DAVID BAUM
ILLUSTRATION BY I-HUA CHEN
CREDIT
CREDIT

32 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
CONTROL
I USE ORACLE ENTERPRISE
MANAGER EVERY DAY.

he trend is inescapable: Networks

get faster, computers get more powerful,
clustering technologies get more effective,
and storage devices get more efficient.
These advances pave the way for software
applications that are more capable and
intelligent, automating a diverse array of
business functions. Yet for many IT man-
agers, quantitative improvements in the IT
infrastructure dont make any qualitative difference where
it matters most: saving time and energy in provisioning,
managing, and monitoring critical information systems.
Enterprise applications built around a service-
oriented architecture (SOA) are further changing the
nature of system management in areas such as configura-
tion management, service-level management, application
performance, and infrastructure management. Highly
modular programs can take advantage of virtualized
system resources in a grid infrastructure, making the
mapping between services and infrastructure
components more complex than it was
in the days of monolithic applications.
Having the ability to manage this com-
plexity and measure end-user experi-
ence in the context of the many working
parts of an SOA environment is critical.
This virtual world of SOA and grid
computing promises tremendous flex-
ibility for deploying and enhancing

ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 33
business applications, but management solutions must evolve
in tandem to achieve comparable advances for IT professionals.
Many of todays emerging applications are being created
to run in highly complex multitier environments where
changes at any level can impact application performance,
confirms Mary Johnston Turner, a vice president at Boston-
based technology research firm Summit Strategies. These
environments are both flexible and dynamic, Turner adds,
but because the tiers are so tightly interconnected, managing
them has become much more complex.
Oracle is helping companies manage the multi-tier
complexity of their IT environments. Our investment in
Oracle Enterprise Manager complements our strong technol-
ogy and application products, allowing customers to improve
service quality and adopt new technology innovations while
controlling management costs, says Oracle President Charles
Phillips. Oracle Grid Control is the centerpiece of this solu-
tion and a key enabler in the adoption of grid computing and
service-oriented architectures.

ADOPTING THE GRID

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, with approximately
850 properties in more than 95 countries, depends on a
production grid environment to run its business. Starwoods
Oracle enterprise grid hosts its reservation system, guest
loyalty system, Web systems, and call center environment.
These information systems encompass our entire business,
so it is critical that we establish very reliable OS, storage
management, and clustering capabilities, says Bill Camp, vice
president of enterprise systems at Starwood.
tarwood is basing its online environment and
underlying database on Oracle Database 10g
Release 2. The company has a 5TB Oracle
database running on a three-node cluster
orchestrated with Oracle Real Application
Clusters (Oracle RAC). Starwoods applica-
tion portfolio includes distribution, content
management, and marketing, in addition
to the reservation and customer-loyalty
systems, Web sites, and call center. The
hospitality chain processes billions of dollars in bookings per
year through its Oracle-based information systems. Oracle
Enterprise Manager helps make it possible.
Our goal is 99.999 percent availability, which is one of
the reasons we have made Oracle RAC and Oracle Enterprise
Manager software our standard going forward, says Arup
Nanda, director of database engineering at Starwood. We use
the Oracle Grid Control software within Oracle Enterprise
Manager for automatic grid monitoring, space management,
performance monitoring, and alerting DBAs. It gives us a
single point of focus for our Oracle-based systems.
Arup Nanda, Director of Database Engineering (left), and Bill Camp, Vice President
of Enterprise Systems, of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide. The companys
goal of 99.999 percent availability is one reason they chose Oracle, Nanda says.
feature of the [Oracle] Enterprise Manager interface allows us
to get to the database and retrieve key performance numbers
from the SGA directly, without logging in and using a SQL
interface, Nanda explains. This allows us to resolve issues
quickly. For us, it was one of the key reasons to implement
Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g [Release] 2.
SOA keeps the system dynamic. Were adopting a service-
oriented architecture based on Oracle technology because it
is much more flexible adapting to changing business require-
ments, Camp says. Having made that decision, it was natural
to go with Oracles management tools as well.
Finding better ways to manage informationeasily,
securely, and at the lowest possible costwas a key design
goal for Oracle Database 10g. Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g
takes advantage of instrumentation and data collection tech-
nologies built into the internals of Oracle Database 10g, Oracle
Fusion Middleware, and Oracle E-Business Suite and couples
that with end-to-end service-level management capabilities to
continually monitor the status and health of any application.
The self-managing capabilities of Oracle Database 10g
fully automate or significantly simplify many routine func-
tions, enabling database administrators to easily optimize
performance, manage backups, and perform other day-to-day
tasks faster than ever before, says Moe Fardoost, director of
marketing for Oracle Enterprise Manager. In complex envi-
CATHERINE GIBBONS

Starwood finds Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Release 2 ronments containing many moving parts, with constantly
to be ideal for managing a grid-based infrastructure because it changing workloads, automated management is essential to
reveals so much information in the browser, especially cluster- maintaining costs.
interconnect information from Oracle RAC. The SGA-attach These comprehensive system management capabilities

34 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
 Were adopting a service-oriented architecture based on Oracle technology because it
is much more flexible adapting to changing business requirements.
Bill Camp, Vice President of Enterprise Systems, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide

have been essential to Advance America, the largest provider
of payday cash-advance services in the United States. The
company operates more than 2,600 cash-advance centers in
37 states and is adding about 400 centers per year.
Several years ago, Advance America implemented an enter-
prise software application called the eAdvantage system to
handle critical business functions such as collecting customer
information, processing new cash advances, and servicing
existing ones. Initially this application was based on a distrib-
uted Sybase environment, with 2,000+ branch databases repli-
cating information to a master corporate database on a nightly
basis. As the company grew, the complexity of this environment
caused delays that affected internal and external operations.
Even with all servers working at maximum capacity, we
no longer had a sufficient window for processing all this
transactional data overnight, recalls David Toothman, CIO
at Advance America. Our distributed database environment
could no longer sustain the business, let alone handle growth.
Advance America needed an infrastructure that would
expand and scale as business grewwithout requiring a cor-
responding increase in IT management cost and complexity.
Toothman and his colleagues adopted Oracle Database 10g,

T H E O R AC L E E N T E R P R I S E M A N AG E R 10 g U N I V E R S E Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g

Service-Level Management enables customers to improve
Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g service quality through
enables executives, business managers, end-to-end monitoring and
and IT administrators to define and automation.
model services, visualize them in
topology views, set service-level
goals, measure service
performance, and report the
status of each service
against goals.
Business
Flows
Application Performance
Management Oracle Custom
IT administrators can Applications Applications
proactively monitor
application services from
end to end, rapidly identify
problems, perform
root-cause analysis, and
take automated
corrective actions.
Connectors
Change & Configuration
Management Plug-ins and
IT managers and connectors
administrators can analyze monitor and
hardware and software manage
configurations, monitor Oracle Database custom and
changes and compliance Real Application Clusters non-Oracle
(Oracle RAC) infrastructure
against configuration and
components and
security policies, and map
exchange
data and capabilities to information
common frameworks. between Oracle
Enterprise
Grid Automation Manager and non-
Oracle Fusion Middleware
IT managers and administrators Oracle management
can lower IT costs through frameworks.
standardization and automation
by provisioning new software and Plug-Ins
applications quickly and easily
using pretested images and auto-
mating patch lifecycle by using Oracle
Enterprise Managers direct connection
STEVE LYONS

to Oracle, proactive patch release

notifications, and single-step distribution.

ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 35
The new system architecture has proven
to be much more reliable by eliminating
single points of failure. In six months of
production processing, we have had zero
unplanned downtime for the database.
David Toothman, CIO, Advance America
Oracle RAC, and Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g. Together
with Oracle Consulting, they implemented a grid-computing
environment that effectively operates as a single system.
One of the key benefits of Oracle Database 10g Release 2
Real Application Clusters is its ability to pass information to
the application server tier about the load on and availability
of particular nodes, says Randy Hietter, director of product
management for Oracle RAC. The middle tier can intel-
ligently route connection requests to the least busy node. In
that way, the middle tier and database tier are functioning as a
cooperative computing grid, dynamically exchanging informa-
tion about their status so as to maximize the utilization and
performance of grid resources.
Thanks to Oracle RAC and Oracle Enterprise Manager,
Advance Americas Oracle grid is reliable and can be expanded
by adding nodes to meet expanding workloads. The new
system architecture has proven to be much more reliable
by eliminating single points of failure, Toothman says. In
six months of production processing, we have had zero
unplanned downtime for the database. The environment is
also much more scalable, giving us the ability to add capacity
on demand in a very cost-effective way.
t Advance America, consolidation and management
capabilities make a difference on the front lines:
where people and systems interact. According to
Sanjay Bamba, the companys director of database
services, consolidating their infrastructure
to a clustered database system has signifi-
cantly reduced management costs. His IT
staff can perform information loads and
roll-ups about two hours faster with the
consolidated grid systema 25 percent
improvement. Meanwhile, at the cash-advance centers,
daily reports are produced more quickly and are available
three to four hours earliera 50 percent improvement.
Instead of maintaining more than 2,000 decentralized
databaseswith their recurring upgrade, support, and man-
agement costsrequests from each cash-advance center are
directed to a service running on all four nodes of the Oracle
RAC cluster, Bamba says. This allows us to adjust the
resources available to each group of clients as the workload
fluctuates. Its working beautifully.
Advance America has discovered another advantage
of deploying Oracle Enterprise Manager software: Oracle
36 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
Sanjay Bamba, Director of Database Services (left), and David Toothman, CIO, of
Advance America. Oracle software allows us to do more with less, Bamba says.
Clusterware eliminates the need for costly third-party soft-
ware. Oracle Grid Control provides us with a single solution
for monitoring the whole clustera centralized place to look
at the health of our system, says Bamba. We dont have to
consult multiple utilities to determine if things are working
well. We use it for performance analysis, job scheduling,
resource monitoring, and to keep an eye on our physical-
standby environment. With [Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g]
Release 2, were able to monitor our environment through new
service and system dashboards, and everyone gets what they
need: service-level information for business users and system
information for administrators. We gain economies of scale as
we bring more activities under the Oracle Enterprise Manager
umbrella, he continues. In a multitier computing environ-
ment, the Oracle software allows us to do more with less.
While numerous third-party management tools are avail-
able, few of them can supply the aggregated information you
need to make intelligent decisionsparticularly when multiple
servers and databases are involved. To help system administra-
tors gain a thorough understanding of database management
in Oracle grid environments, Oracle has introduced Oracle
Diagnostic Pack and Oracle Tuning Pack, specialized manage-
ment utilities that complement and extend Oracle Enterprise
Manager Grid Control software.
We have to provide 24/7 support for our databases, and
we needed a tool that would let us know if there is a problem,
so we could be on top of it right away, says Susan Szot,
BOB RIVES
manager of the Corporate Information Technology Metro DBA
team at Pfizer, the worlds largest research-based pharmaceuti-

Pfizer Corporate Information Technology group members (clockwise): Bala
Palayam, DBA Team Lead, Marie Rosato, DBA Team Lead, Sue Szot, Manager of the
Metro DBA Team, and Sara Weyman, DBA Team Lead.
cal company. We tried several kinds of monitoring tools, with
various degrees of success. [Oracle] Enterprise Manager Grid
Control had the most promise, so we started a pilot. Now we
use the software to monitor all of our databases, in conjunction
with the Oracle Diagnostics Pack and Oracle Tuning Pack.
Szot and her team of 15 DBAs use Oracle Enterprise
Manager Grid Control 10g to manage 30TB of Oracle data
housed in 900 Oracle databases on an Oracle grid consist-
ing of 250 serversa mixture of Sun Solaris and Microsoft
Windows computers.
Pfizer primarily uses Oracle9i Database and is moving
toward Oracle Database 10g for all its production systems.
Formerly, they depended on third-party tools to manage these
information systems, but Szot says the software didnt scale
well and lacked insight into the Oracle product stack. As a
result, Pfizer had to use several software products to monitor
and maintain its IT systems.
Today, Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control gives Pfizer
one central management utility for streamlining and automat-
ing a wide variety of tasks. According to Bala Palayam, a DBA
team lead at Pfizer, Oracle Diagnostic Pack is especially useful
for troubleshooting. It includes a diagnostic engine built
into the Oracle Database kernel, enabling Oracle Enterprise
Manager to continually collect metrics and information about
the performance of the database environment. If a user com-
plains about performance, a couple of clicks in a GUI-based
diagnostic console often reveal the problem.
In the past, we couldnt tell if we had a problem with the
database, the network, or something else, so we had to dis-
patch a team of people to figure out what was going on, says
Palayam. It might take all day. Now, Enterprise Manager Grid
Control can tell us if something happened with the database
before we get all these other people involved. For example, if
a user drops an index, which causes a runaway query, we can
pinpoint the problem in 10 minutes.
All of these issues become more pronounced in complex
environments, since Pfizer is managing not just individual
servers but a shared virtualized infrastructure. Gradually, we
are learning to use Oracle Enterprise Manager to manage and
monitor not just the database but the underlying infrastruc-
ture, Szot says.
Pfizer uses the Oracle Tuning Pack to improve application

PLUGGING INTO ORACLE ENTERPRISE MANAGER

o reduce IT costs, many companies are
T recognizing the importance of acquiring
management and diagnostic tools that offer
a holistic viewof servers, storage devices,
operating systems, application servers, and
databasesthat is mapped directly to their
core applications. Oracle is leading the charge
to integrate management with Oracle Enterprise
Manager 10g Release 2, which includes plug-
ins and connectors to monitor and manage the
entire application stack, from custom software
modules to infrastructure elements.
The Oracle Enterprise Manager plug-ins
dramatically extend Oracles ability to monitor
CATHERINE GIBBONS
issues throughout an Oracle grid as well as
monitor and manage non-Oracle products.
Companies use the plug-ins to integrate F5
load balancers, NetApp filers, EMC storage,
Checkpoint and Juniper firewalls, non-Oracle
middleware, the Microsoft .NET Framework,
and the Microsoft Windows Server System,
including the SQL Server database.
Oracle Enterprise Manager connectors
enable the bidirectional exchange of informa-
tion between Oracle Enterprise Manager and
other management solutions that customers
may have in their environments. For example,
Starwood has plans to integrate Oracle
marketing for Oracle Enterprise Manager,
the plug-ins and connectors enable a single
administrator to perform complex management
tasks, such as provisioning extra resources to
meet increased demand, even in a heteroge-
neous environment.
Oracle has used open industry standards
such as Web services and XML to simplify
the process of integrating other management
systems, he explains. Through plug-ins and
connectors, Oracle Enterprise Manager can
be applied to a single database system or an
entire grid environment. This allows custom-
ers to monitor multiple business applications

data from other systems, says Mary Johnston Enterprise Manager 10g with HP OpenView, its and management utilities as easily as if they
Turner, a vice president at Summit Strategies corporate monitoring standard. were managing one application running on
in Boston. Customers can detect and resolve According to Moe Fardoost, director of one computer.

ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 37
Oracle management utilities are helping
us to centralize security, backup, monitor-
ing, and maintenance activities, as well as
to integrate our backup strategy with our
monitoring strategy.
Susan Szot, Manager, Metro DBA Team, Pfizer

performance via better SQL query management. If a SQL

query is chewing up a lot of CPU time, Oracle Enterprise
Manager can often identify why, says Palayam. For
example, it can reveal a hanging process and even kill the
process right away to free up the database. The culprit might
be the number of sessions or how particular processes are
being executed.
While Oracle Enterprise Manager can take corrective action
when needed, Pfizer prefers to be alerted to problems and
advised about solutionsthen fix the actual problems them-
selves. The exception comes with analyzing database schemas
and tablesa tedious process when you are dealing with
900 databases. Before, wed have to set up dozens of indi-
vidual jobs to do that, Szot says. Now we can automate it all
through Oracle Enterprise Manager. What used to be a 30-hour
job can now be accomplished in just two or three hours.
Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control also improves
security with respect to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Because
we have all of our databases hooked to Oracle Enterprise
Manager, we have a centralized way of running security
scripts, Szot says.
Palayam appreciates Oracle Enterprise Managers Web-
based architecture, since it means Pfizer does not have to
install so much desktop software to manage the grid. All you
do is point administrators to a URL to access all of the man-
agement functions, he explains. It is downward-compatible,
so we can use it to monitor Oracle Database 10g, Oracle9i
Database, Oracle8i Database, and even to monitor Microsoft
SQL Server databases.
Pfizer has integrated Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid
Control with Oracle RMAN, which streamlines the process
of scheduling database backups. Oracle management utili-
ties are helping us to centralize security, backup, monitoring,
and maintenance activities, as well as to integrate our backup
strategy with our monitoring strategy, Szot says. Weve only
scratched the surface, yet already this software is solving our
current problems and getting us ready for the future. We are
less reliant on third-party management tools and weve elimi-
nated some third-party tools from our environment. I think its
only going to get better.
FLEXIBILITY WITH ORACLE RAC
After extensive testing, Replacements determined that Oracle RAC is a more
reliable and robust structure than a single-instance failover model, says Jim
Meredith, IT Manager.
Manager, Oracle RAC enhances database configurations. With
Oracle RAC, Oracle Database 10g runs on two or more servers
in a cluster that concurrently access a single shared database.
This configuration extends flexibility and scalability to the
business applications that use Oracle databases, since admin-
istrators can add additional server and storage resources as
needed. This configuration is also more reliable: If one server
or storage device encounters a problem, the other devices in
the cluster will continue to carry the load.
[Oracle] RAC addresses unplanned outages, with extensive
data protection and disaster recovery capabilities, which helps
us sustain business continuity, says Starwoods Nanda.
This architecture was appealing to Replacements, a
specialty retailer with an inventory of 10 million pieces of
tableware in more than 200,000 patterns. The company has
been using Oracle technology since 1994 to power its inven-
tory system. In 2005, Replacements deployed an enterprise
grid infrastructure comprised of Oracle 10g software.
After extensive testing, we determined that Oracle RAC
is a more reliable and robust structure than a single-instance
failover model, as we had been using before, says Jim
Meredith, IT manager at Replacements. And because we use
BOB RIVES

Just as the added functionality of Oracle Diagnostics and commodity hardware, the equipment costs us less as well.
Tuning Packs extend the core capabilities of Oracle Enterprise Replacements uses Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g to

38 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
automate DBA tasks, and the service levels, measure those
Web console supplies insight SNAPSHOT service levels from an end-user
into every aspect of service perspective, rapidly isolate
performance, so they can more Advance America problematic issues through the
easily troubleshoot problems. www.advanceamerica.net entire stack, and respond by
Location: Spartanburg, South Carolina
The IT staff is also using Oracle adjusting resources as appropri-
Industry: Financial services
Automatic Storage Management Number of employees: 6,500
ate, he explains.
to simplify storage management Oracle products and services: Oracle Database 10g, Oracle RAC,
activities, which has eliminated Oracle Clusterware, Oracle Automatic Storage Management, Oracle MANAGING CHANGE
the need for third-party cluster Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor, Oracle Enterprise Manager While these new management
file system software. 10g Grid Control, and Oracle RAC Pack consulting services capabilities represent a huge
All of the storage for the advancement for the industry,
Pfizer
database is controlled through teaching and learning new pro-
www.pfizer.com
Oracle Enterprise Manager and Location: Morris Plains, New Jersey cedures can be challenging in
related utilities, says Meredith. Industry: Pharmaceuticals many corporate cultures. Still,
For example, database backups Number of employees: 115,000 customers who have used the
are controlled and managed Oracle products and services: Oracle8i Database, Oracle9i Database, browser-based interface in Oracle
through Oracle Recovery Manager Oracle Database 10g, Oracle RAC, Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Enterprise Manager claim that it
Control, Oracle Diagnostic Pack, Oracle Tuning Pack
[RMAN]. We also use the paging makes routine tasks and training
and notification facilities within Replacements easier and more efficient.
Oracle Enterprise Manager to www.replacementsltd.com Training DBAs is extremely
detect potential problems, such as Location: Greensboro, North Carolina easy with the Web interface of
if resource use exceeds a certain Industry: Retail Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid
threshold. If configurable thresh- Number of employees: 550 Control, says Starwoods Nanda.
olds such as run queue length Oracle products and services: Oracle Database 10g, Oracle RAC, Rather than having to work with
Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control, Oracle RAC Pack
or session count are exceeded, a dozen tools and learn their
consulting services
Oracle Enterprise Manager can commands, you can do it all
bring up another instance of the Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide through a single interface.
service on another node. It works www.starwoodhotels.com Having a cohesive view of the
very well. Location: White Plains, New York IT environment becomes more
Industry: Travel, guest services important as customers adopt
Number of employees: 145,000
AN INSIDE VIEW virtualized grids in which physi-
Oracle products and services: Oracle9i Database, Oracle Database
Summit Strategies Turner 10g, Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Release 2
cal resources enable a logical set
believes that theres a reason of IT services. Oracle Enterprise
Oracle Enterprise Manager is so Manager treats IT resources as
effective within grid computing installations. Oracles strategy virtual components that can be transparently mapped onto
is to manage from the inside of the applicationmapping business services, provisioned, monitored, and managed.
deep knowledge of its core system components with real per- Graphical service topologies and service dashboards continu-
formance of end-user business services at the level of discrete ally display pertinent information to both IT managers and
business services, she says. Oracle has a good perspective business owners, so they can monitor application services and
on whats going on with those business services and is gradu- the quality of service being delivered to end users, rather than
ally extending Oracle Enterprise Manager to encompass mul- focusing only on the performance of discrete components,
tiple layers of the infrastructure. Other system management Oracles Fardoost says.
tools have more of an outside-looking-in perspective on the Advance Americas Toothman believes that approaching
application and database environments. the management discipline at this level ups the ante for
In other words, as a vendor that supplies not only the administrators and that their jobs become correspondingly
database but also many mature enterprise applications and more interesting.
associated middleware, Oracle has an intimate view of the As more of our routine management tasks are automated
entire application stack. According to Dave Pearson, senior by Oracle software, our IT staff is able to take on more-
director of Oracle architecture, this unique insight into the challenging tasks for the business, he says. Oracle Enterprise
infrastructure allows Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Release 2 Manager makes it easier to understand the grid environment
to provide richer end-to-end application management for all through the topology viewer and other mappings.
application environments. Summit Strategies Turner believes that the technology
Once you define services, either at the database or the professionals who confront these management challenges will
application level, you can set policies that establish expected find more-interesting work. Gradually were going to see a

ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 39
With Oracle Enterprise Manager, [our DBA] can see all the databases and all the servers
through one interface, so he knows at a glance if there is a resource bottleneck.
Jim Meredith, IT Manager, Replacements

need for higher-caliber IT professionals who can think at these
higher levels of abstraction.
These changes in IT management approach are already
happening as businesses migrate toward a more-automated IT
environment. Replacements has discovered these productivity
benefits firsthand in its work with Oracle Enterprise Manager.
Weve transferred much of the administrative load off of our
UNIX/Linux administrator, says Meredith. Similarly, our
DBA is doing a lot more high-level managing and a lot less
mundane work. With Oracle Enterprise Manager, he can see
all the databases and all the servers through one interface, so
he knows at a glance if there is a resource bottleneck, such
as if a server hits a memory or CPU threshold or end-user
response time gets a little bit slow.
Turner sees this pattern repeatedly. The journey toward
management automation requires enterprises to plan and
operate IT differently than they might have done in the past,
she says.
In an automated, policy-driven world, service-level
agreements need to be defined in the context of end-to-end
business processes rather than physical hardware character-
istics, like percentage of uptime, she says. Similarly, IT staff
members need to rethink their roles and responsibilities as
they move away from manual problem intervention and start
focusing on automation through more-comprehensive man-
agement software such as Oracle Enterprise Manager.
But the successes reported hereand many others just like
themare motivating many companies to get started now. O
David Baum (david@dbaumcomm.com) is a freelance business writer based in
Santa Barbara, California.
READ more about
Oracle Enterprise Manager plug-ins and connectors
oracle.com/technology/products/oem/extensions/
Oracle Grid Computing
oracle.com/technologies/grid/
READ Oracle Grid Computing customer ROI studies
oracle.com/technologies/grid/grid_roi.html

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40 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
 BREWING
Good Business
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters realized timely order
management and billing, greater analytic visibility for accounts,
and fewer losses in raw materials with PeopleSoft, according to
Rod Ely, system architect and development manager.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters uses PeopleSoft to deliver the ultimate coffee experience.
reen Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) is serving
its customers and sales force today and brewing big
plans for its future. The IT team at GMCR recently
implemented new tools for sales force automation
and expects to deploy campaign management tools to sharpen
marketing intelligence, outfit an e-commerce Web site with
new and innovative products to enhance consumer-direct
sales, and update GMCRs supply chain and financial systems
before years end. It seems like a lot to accomplish, but this
team has a lot of experience with systematic deployment of
Oracles PeopleSoft applications.
Since 1997, weve been engaged in a strategic, business-
process-by-process rollout of integrated PeopleSoft products
DAVE BRADLEY
for supply chain management, financial management, enter-
prise performance management [ERP], and customer relation-
ship management [CRM], says Rod Ely, system architect and
BY MI C H AE L M ILEY
development manager at GMCR. Tools for enhancing sales
and marketing are just two of the more-recent functions were
putting into place to drive new business. But we couldnt
manage that growth efficiently had we not built our infrastruc-
ture carefully over time, with an eye to the needs of the entire
business. Our goal has always been to support within one
system, one data model, all the ways that we strive to deliver
the ultimate coffee experience to our customers. Thats whats
evolving at GMCR today.
Born from a coffee shop with a small roasting operation in
Waitsfield, Vermont, the company now serves more than four
million cups of coffee a day and sells nearly 20 million pounds
of coffee a year. A leader in the specialty coffee industry, GMCRs
revenue is largely derived from its wholesale operations. It sells
most of its coffee through resellersrestaurants, supermarkets,
specialty food and convenience stores, hospitality and food
ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 41
service, and office coffee services. It also oper- GMCRs online marketing CRM activities
ates a direct mail-order business and a Web SNAP SHOT include a consumer newsletter that goes out
site where customers can buy coffee and to 80,000 consumers each month. With
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
coffee-related products. For the past three www.greenmountaincoffee.com
that tool, we can dynamically create content
years, Forbes has recognized the socially and Location: Waterbury, Vermont in the e-mail to our consumers, based on
ecologically conscious company as one of the Annual revenue: US$161 million their preferences as coffee purchasers, says
200 Best Small Companies in America, a Oracle products: Oracle Database; Ely. We can tell if a consumer is interested
reputation it has worked hard to achieve. Oracles PeopleSoft Customer Relationship in flavored coffees, decafs versus regular,
GMCRs IT team supports the business by Management, PeopleSoft Enterprise fair-trade organicor if they own one of
Performance Management, PeopleSoft
working smart. Moving from homegrown our single-cup Keurig brewers, they need
Financial Management, PeopleSoft Human
supply chain and financial applications Capital Management, PeopleSoft Supplier K-Cups to brew.
housed in a Btrieve database to PeopleSoft Relationship Management, PeopleSoft GMCR redesigned and launched its
products running on an Oracle database, Supply Chain Management consumer-direct Web site in 2004. The Web
GMCR took its first steps in 1997 to imple- site provides excellent 24/7 convenience for
ment an integrated ERP solution with broad functionality that our consumers while not requiring more call-center reps. In
could both manage its coffee production and distribution pro- fact, the new system capability in the consumer-direct business
cesses and drive its growth. has been a key enabler, more than doubling the sales in two
The first group of apps we deployed included PeopleSoft years, while dramatically improving our net profit, he says.
General Ledger, Purchasing, Accounts Payable, Inventory, With 350 employees now on the PeopleSoft systems,
Production Management, Cost Management, Bill of Materials, GMCR went live early this year with a sales pipeline manage-
and Routingthe purchasing and receiving side of finance ment project for about half of its sales force, so salespeople
along with the general ledger, says Ely. At the same time, we can access its PeopleSoft CRM applications from a browser on
brought up the manufacturing modules so that we could build their laptops. IT is also putting an enterprise data warehouse
inventory and push it to finished goods. We were the first live in place to offload data from the operational system and to
customer on PeopleSoft Manufacturing at that time. A year later, provide the historical data for PeopleSoft Demand Planning
we implemented Accounts Receivable, Order Management, modules being put into place. GMCR has also launched a mar-
and Billing, followed in 1999 by Human Resources, Mail keting campaign management project, adding PeopleSoft tools
Order, the PeopleSoft eStore, and Asset Management. to drive even more leads into its wholesale business, while
The company has steadily added more PeopleSoft appli- ramping up consumer-direct marketing and sales.
cations critical to its business, even as it worked to be rock The upshot of these software implementations is improved
solid on the earlier modules. GMCR added PeopleSoft profitability. When we implemented the first module of
Stock Administration in 2002; Production Planning and PeopleSoft, we were about a [US]$20 million company, Ely
Online Marketing in 2003; and upgrades to CRM, Human says. Were at $160 million now. Three years ago, we were in
Resources, CRM Sales Lead Tracking (a new warehouse the top 10 performers on NASDAQ. Wed gone from less than
control system/distribution center), and a new consumer- US$10 a share to more than $60 in about a year.
direct Web site in 2004. Were up on more than 20 The merger of Oracle and PeopleSoft has also brought
PeopleSoft modules today, Ely says. benefits to GMCRs IT strategy. Now that we have one vendor
Its been quite a journey, one that began with deploying that can cover everything from database through application
tools for optimizing accounting, while building more control server to applications, were expecting even better total cost
over inventory in raw materials and pushing more out to of ownership out of that relationship, says Ely. Indeed, were
finished goods. fully in gear to implement the rest of PeopleSoft CRM in the
Other benefits in the early stages of our enterprise planning enterprise and are poised to phase in the upgrades to Oracle
project included more-timely order management and billing; Fusionto benefit even more from the efficiencies gained
greater analytic visibility for accounts, balances, and receiv- from our integrated PeopleSoft functionality. O
ables, since everything was on one system; and the reduction
of losses in raw materials, since transactions taken right on the Michael Miley (mmiley@pacbell.net) is a freelance writer living in Sonoma, California.
manufacturing floor could be more accurately accounted for,
says Ely. When our Production Planning kicked in, the bill-
of-materials explosionalong with production routingwere
feeding our purchasing requirements and our production READ more about Oracles PeopleSoft Enterprise applications
capacity scheduling by work area based on what the system oracle.com/applications/peoplesoft-enterprise.html

saw for demand and scheduled production netted out against LEARN more about Oracle Applications
oracle.com/applications
inventory. It gave us what we needed to coordinate our daily
production plan with a set of tools and processes that would DISCOVER Oracle Fusion
oracle.com/applications/fusion.html
scale easily as we grow.

42 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
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 BY ALA N JO C H

ORACLE HELPS RETAIL

BUSINESSES
GROW
Detail-driven retailers are gaining competitive
advantages with a new focus on customer data.

hen consumers go online and buy a book, or walk into a

store and buy a pair of jeans, most of them are unaware
of an important fact: Complex software has ensured that
the retailer has the merchandiseeither available to
ship, or in that store in that size, at a particular price. Retailers have
increasingly turned to software solutions to satisfy their customers
and manage and grow their businesses. And Oracles retail applica-
tions, coupled with its database capabilities, offer companies the tools
they need to give them a competitive edge.
One company that wanted to grow faster than its old software could
handle was Parelli Natural Horsemanship, an equestrian education and
equipment company, which had built a thriving business around a simple
philosophy: Parelli customers achieve successful results when they
develop a common language with their horses. Ironically, an outdated
and piecemeal IT system kept the Pagosa Springs, Colorado, company
from developing similar insights and bonds with its customers.
Not only was Parelli unable to identify its most-profitable retail
customers; mounds of dirty data thwarted efforts to conduct sophisti-
cated marketing campaigns based on information it had in-house. At
one point more than 40 percent of its customer records were dupli-
cates. We had information spread around too many systems because
of these different technological pieces, recalls Chris Dollar, IT director
I-HUA CHEN

at Parelli. We knew that system wouldnt serve us much longer.

That all changed in 2005 when Parelli opted for a single, enterprise-

ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 45
class relational database and a strategy for assuring that essen-
tial business and customer data remained available and trust-
worthy. I cant say enough how great it is for us to have that
one repository of accurate information, Dollar says.
In a world where retail businesses live or die from having the
right information at the right time, data assurance is a strategic
key to success. Obsession with information predates comput-
ers, to when merchants were famous for staying close to their
operations. They used to touch the merchandise; now they like
to touch the data, says Paula Rosenblum, vice president, retail
research, for technology research and consulting firm Aberdeen
Group. But [rather than] generic data, Rosenblum adds, they
want detailed information focused to their particular issues.
Data-centric retailers are making information integrity the
backbone of their operations to ensure that every manager has
the same views of inventory, pricing, and performance from
every point in the delivery system.
Retail is detail, says David Boyce, vice president of global
marketing for Oracle Retail. Retailers learn that every single
detail of the business matters. The trick is [to think]: How do
Ramiro Cormenzana, Database Administrator (left), and Edgardo Sokolowicz, Chief
I get my share of the spending dollars in each market by offer- Technology Officer, MercadoLibre. Whats very important is the performance,
ing merchandise that speaks to the local customer? stability, and availability of our platform, says Sokolowicz.
The answer is a technology foundation built for reliability,
easy integration, and accuracy, teamed with applications that retailers need a reliable single version of the truth. The under-
let retailers localize their offerings without giving up central lying database technology must be sophisticated enough to give
control, Boyce adds. Merchandising decisions, such as manag- an accurate central source of data even when volumes reach
ing traffic flow, are still made by local store managers. Decisions hundreds of thousands of products.
about what products show up on the shelves and how they
are staged throughout the supply chain, however, are made MANAGEABLE POWER
centrally. If youve got 1,000 stores and 200,000 products, the MercadoLibre.com provides an online trading platform where
number of decisions that [central planners] have to make if you more than 12.5 million registered users in Latin America carry
treat each store as a unique unit is unwieldythats more than a out more than 1 million transactions per month. The company
billion numbers to track across four seasons requires sophisticated data assurance
and across actuals, plan, and historicals. systems to keep this volume of buying
Although automated systems are the
SNAP SHOTS and selling flowing smoothly. Whats
obvious answer in managing and analyzing MercadoLibre very important is the performance, stabil-
data, launching the technology isnt always www.mercadolibre.com ity, and availability of our platform, says
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
that easy. The retail industry has special Industry: Retail Edgardo Sokolowicz, chief technology
needs, created in part by the size of many Oracle products: Oracle9i Database Release officer (CTO) at MercadoLibre.
chain stores and the amount of prod- 9.2.05, Oracle9i Real Application Clusters In the past, MercadoLibre relied on
ucts that flow through the supply chain. single, high-performance servers, includ-
Parelli Natural Horsemanship
Applications must be able to accommo- www.parelli.com ing one with 24 CPUs. But last year, the
date this quantity (see the sidebar, Retail Location: Pagosa Springs, Colorado company opted for a new strategy when
Applications Promote Collaboration). Industry: Retail and education it implemented an 11-node Oracle9i
The database, application servers, and Oracle products: Oracle9i Database, Oracle Database Release 9.2.5 cluster using
E-Business Suite Release 11.5.10, Oracle
middleware technologies must operate SQL Developer, Oracle XML Publisher, Oracle Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle
comfortably in this kind of high-volume, Discoverer. RAC) technology. Return-on-investment
high-growth environment. Scalability and (ROI) estimates before the switchover
assuring the accuracy of data are essential. Tomax predicted an eventual US$2.4 million
www.tomax.com
Retailing also requires the ability to inte- Location: Salt Lake City, Utah return on the Oracle RAC investment, a
grate all sales channels, ranging from stores Industry: Information technology rate that Sokolowicz says is borne out in
to Web sites to catalogs. Theres a very Oracle products: Oracle Database 10g, Oracle practice. Instead of buying the two multi-
Application Server 10g, Oracle Developer Suite
GABRIEL PIKO

short list of retailers whove done it right, CPU servers for US$800,000, Sokolowicz
10g, Oracle Real Application Clusters 10g,
says Boyce. Consumer frustration and lost Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Discoverer invested less than 10 percent of that for
sales for retailers can be the result. Finally, his commodity-PC cluster. Now, as we

46 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
[With RAC,] we kill three birdsperformance, growth management, and availability
with one stone, all while achieving our cost savings.
Edgardo Sokolowicz, Chief Technology Officer, MercadoLibre

continue to grow the business, we dont need to have more
serverswe can just add new server nodes, he says. We kill
three birdsperformance, growth management, and availabil-
itywith one stone, all while achieving our cost savings.
Scalability and dependability in a high-volume environment
are also critical for Tomax, an IT hosting services company
and creator of the Retail.net suite of applications for manag-
ing retail chains. Tomax relies on Oracle RAC and runs Oracle
Application Server 10g Release 2 in a clustered implementation,
which allows for load balancing to level out spikes in demand.
When you become dependent on real-time data for under-
standing the business, you need to move in the direction of
a clustered implementation, says Virgil Fernandez, CTO of
the Salt Lake City, Utahbased company. Using [Oracle] RAC
for retail customers offers complete hardware availability and
failover thats transparent to the application suite. So
when one node crashes, the remaining nodes take over
before end users notice performance problems. Two
months after one of our customers went live on
[an Oracle] RAC implementation, a motherboard
failed, Fernandez says. The hardware provider
took two days to get that figured out and repaired.
Meanwhile, the entire enterprise ran on the other node and
people didnt even know that a node had gone down.
The hot snapshot capability of Oracle Database maintains
accurate data for any Tomax retailer. The snapshot is a copy of
the production database, and the customers data waits there
in a standby mode and updates near real-time through archive
log processing. If there were a complete failure of the primary
database, we can bring the standby to primary status in less
than five minutes, Fernandez says.
INTEGRATION CHALLENGES
A strong middleware layer can help retailers with a problem
that vexes many operations that combine a chain of stores with
Web sales and catalog business. The problem: A customer goes
to the Web site to evaluate and choose a product, then arrives at
the store to buyonly to learn that the product in question is
sold only through the Web site or that the price is differ-
ent from whats advertised online. Even the best-in-class
retailers are proving to be vulnerable in this area, says
Aberdeens Rosenblum.
Oracle Fusion Middleware is an example of tech-
nology thats making it easier for the customer to

Retail Applications Promote Collaboration

Widespread use of commercial enterprise
applications among retailers is a relatively new
phenomenon. Unlike manufacturers, who adopted
off-the-shelf enterprise resource planning 20
years ago, retailers in the last decade gradu-
ally loosened their tenacious hold on custom
programs, believing that the size of their retail
businesses and their unique product volumes
presented needs that only proprietary applica-
tions could adequately address.
Now that those attitudes have started to
change, retailers have an additional weapon: the
rise of tightly integrated retail applications suites
that handle everything from supply chain and
merchandise planning to promotions and mark-
downs, customer relationship management, and
trend analyses.
Oracle Retail solutions model this trend.
Oracle Retail Merchandising System was built
on Oracle database technology and developed
to manage merchandise, supply chain, and store
planning activities. It provides the backbone for
running a retailing operation, says David Boyce,
vice president of global marketing for Oracle
Retail. Retailers use Oracle Retail Merchandising
System to manage master records of products,
prices, vendors, and inventory levels, including
in-transit merchandise.
Oracle Retail Profit Optimization helps retailers
customize individual store offerings for local
customer desires and manage promotions and
markdown strategies for maximum profits.
Oracles retail store solutions offer a set of appli-
cations to enhance customer service activities at
point-of-sale and in cross-channel environments
consisting of store, Web, and catalog transactions.
Combining Oracle technology with retail appli-
cations relieves retailers from having to maintain
custom code and integration interfaces among
various best-of-breed products; concerns about
consolidation have so far been unfounded. In-
house integration projects at some of the nations
largest retailers have already successfully linked
these formerly separate components, Boyce
says. And the companies that accomplished this
arent software companies. Integration is immi-
nently doable, and Oracle is now doing that work
on behalf of the retailers.
Continuing on this evolutionary path, Oracle
has plans to certify all its retail applications on
Oracle Fusion Middleware, to be completed in
phases. This is a significant step that helps more
tightly tie and integrate the applications across
the Oracle Retail suite, Boyce says.
Other projects within Oracle enhance the
abilities of retailers and suppliers to coordinate
activities around promotions. We have a number
of assets that allow manufacturers and retailers
to collaborate on trade promotions, including
payment variability, estimates on how much
of the product will get sold, or how much the
retailer should buy, says Jeff Wexler, senior
director of industry strategy for Oracle.
Closer collaboration among suppliers and
retailers will help in a crucial balancing act, he
adds. The retailers want to have as little inven-
tory on hand as they can, but they also dont
want to have the customer come in and not have
a product on the shelf.

ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 47
Using [Oracle] RAC for retail customers
offers complete hardware availability
and failover thats transparent to the
application suite.
Virgil Fernandez, Chief Technology Officer, Tomax

integrate all of this, says Rosenblum. Besides efficiency, this

integration may provide a business advantage, especially for new
or small retailers whose sales now lag behind larger competitors.
These firms understand that technological leapfrogging is a
way to catch up, she says, adding that according to Aberdeens
research, over the next 12 to 24 months, there will be a signifi-
cant increase in spending for multichannel integration.
Integration and scalability were priorities for Parelli last
year when it went live with an Oracle E-Business Suite instal-
lation running with Oracle9i Database in an environment
hosted by Darc, an IT services and management company
based in Chicago. Parellis growing business, with ranches at
its Pagosa Springs headquarters and in Florida, offers classes,
self-study teaching materials, and equestrian gear. Nearly 60
percent of its retail sales come through an online store.
Parellis old IT infrastructure lacked a common data dic-
tionary to facilitate information sharing among its applica-
tions, so the company had to maintain separate databases
for its old enterprise resource planning (ERP) application,
Web customers, and top customers. For example, a full-time
employee was charged with rekeying Web orders into the
ERP and accounting systems to complete the transaction.
We needed a way to integrate those systems before growth
became too fast for us to keep up with, Parellis Dollar says.
Now we use [Oracle] Order Management for most of our
retail orders and course enrollmentsnot only through the
standard applications, but we use the open APIs that Oracle
has to interface in our Web shop, Dollar adds. In addition,
the Oracle iPayment module lets the company leverage its
longtime relationship with its credit card merchant company
while harnessing Oracle integration. Were planning to sell
gift cards, and we can write that code right into iPayment,
adds Dollar. So, any of our customers that want to [can] use
that [gift card] on a phone sale that we do through the Order
Management system. The APIs in iPayment are there so that
we can write our custom payment servlet so that we can
interface Mercury Payment Systems directly into Oracle.
The Oracle-based hosted system lets Parelli keep pace
with demand. Even as sales rose 30 percent last year, the
company saved money by decreasing its call center staff, and
it no longer needed to rekey orders, thanks to productivity
gained from integrating enterprise applications with a central
database. Whenever youve got information spread out in so
many places, theres no real way to aggregate that to see who
Chris Dollar, IT Director at Parelli Natural Horsemanship, says that having
centralized customer data has improved the bottom line. This year has been the
best tour in terms of revenue per person attending that weve ever had.
customers and identify duplicates and create that clean master.
When executives expanded Parellis international sales earlier
this year, the company handled the additional business without
upgrading its IT resources. This initiative would not have been
possible with the old system, Dollar explains. With Oracle, we
can do the international currencies painlessly, and we get the
stability we need from Oracle Database. Even though we hadnt
planned for our international push to come so soon, the Oracle
system was ready to handle it, which contributed to extra ROI.
Now that Parelli has customer information in a central
spot, its using the data for better marketing. For example, the
company conducts road shows across the country to demon-
strate its training techniques. With better customer data, it can
pinpoint geographical areas where its best customers are con-
centrated and schedule events accordingly. Dollar says, This
year has been the best tour in terms of revenue per person
attending that weve ever had. Getting closer to customers by
riding on the back of data has never been easier. O
Alan Joch (ajoch@worldpath.net) is a technology writer based in New England who
specializes in enterprise, Web, and high-performance-computing applications.
READ more about Oracle Retail applications
oracle.com/industries/retail
Oracle Retail Merchandise Operations Management
oracle.com/applications/retail/mom
Oracle Retail Profit Optimization
oracle.com/applications/retail/rpo
Oracle Retail Point-of-Service
RAY NG

oracle.com/applications/retail/co/point-of-service.html
your best customers are, Dollar says. Oracle lets you merge

48 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

ACCESS
_
<GRANTED>
____________________________________________________________
Identity management enables security for privacy and regulatory mandates.
rganizations traditionally have invested in security
technology to prevent unauthorized users from
gaining access to private information or restricted
IT services. Over the past few years, the scope and
importance of security technologies in general, and identity
management in particular, has changed. New identity manage-
ment and security capabilitiesas found in Oracles identity
management offeringscan increase developer productivity
while lowering costs and helping to address todays stringent
compliance requirements.
Identity management solutions like Oracles can acceler-
ate the deployment of new systems, says George Jucan, CEO
at Open Data Systems, a Toronto-based consulting services
company. In terms of [development] effort, security can rep-
resent 30 to 40 percent of any new system. Having all those
security features contained in a centralized system that is
equipped to fully manage security takes a lot of cycles out of
the development effort.
Not only can a good identity management solution simplify
development, it can also speed up application deployment
by standardizing security components, reducing application
and user maintenance requirements, and creating greater con-
sistency in the way business policies are applied. Moreover,
identity management helps organizations comply with new
regulatory obligations by enabling companies to enforce access
control mechanisms that segregate the duties of users. Identity
BY DAV ID A . K ELLY, WITH DAVI D BAU M
management also helps to automate the processes around
compliance, and it enables the creation of audit trails, which
track access to applications.
Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse, in Burlington,
New Jersey, has experienced some of these benefits firsthand.
The national retailer has been using Lightweight Directory
Access Protocol (LDAP) services for some of its identity
management needs for more than five years, but managers
realized that they needed to consolidate and coordinate their
growing LDAP stack more efficiently. Burlington deployed
Oracle Internet Directory (OID) to leverage its existing directory
service. We use Oracle Internet Directory as our primary iden-
tity management hub, synchronizing pertinent information to
other LDAP servers for deployment throughout the enterprise,
says Chris Lundell, network administrator, Burlington.
Lundell explains that OID maps password and account
expiration information to an OpenLDAP (an open source
implementation of LDAP) server cluster for UNIX authenti-
cation and authorization, effectively replacing Sun Network
Information System. OID has its own set of password policies
and account lockout/expiration policies. These policies are
mapped to their UNIX equivalents in real time, keeping all
UNIX accounts up-to-date. Its a seamless and straightforward
way to manage the process, says Lundell.
Burlington also uses OID to synchronize with Microsofts
Active Directory. Accounts in Active Directory are managed
ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 49
Oracle Internet Directory is a natural fit for centralizing and coordinating our diverse
and evolving LDAP stack. For us, OID is indispensable.
Chris Lundell, Network Administrator, Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse

in much the same way that the UNIX accounts are managed. from managing many user names and passwordsespecially
Identity management is becoming core to our IT operations, in light of password change cycles. From a compliance per-
says Lundell. Burlington Coat Factory is becoming very spective, we wanted a more-centralized way to audit the access
LDAP-centric, and Oracle Internet Directory is a natural fit for records and user-access patterns across brands, McDonald says.
centralizing and coordinating our diverse and evolving LDAP To mitigate these issues, Ingersoll Rand implemented a
stack. For us, OID is indispensable. brand portal built on Oracle Access Manager. One of the
most important features of this single-sign-on system, called
MANAGING EXTRANET COMPLEXITY IR Passport, is how it allows Ingersoll Rand to delegate user
While identity management solutions can simplify opera- administration at multiple levels, such as by region, district,
tions for an individual company such as Burlington, Mike and dealer, significantly reducing the user-management bottle-
Neuenschwander, vice president and research director at neck at Ingersoll Rands help desk.
analyst firm Burton Group, says todays identity management We wanted to minimize the impact to the existing
solutions often open applications application footprint to keep
to business partners and custom- Identifying the Management Components costs down, McDonald
ers as well. Identity management explains. Oracle Access
is becoming a very important A complete identity management solution needs to include a Manager has a hot-pluggable
enabler, particularly in federation wide range of functionality to manage a broad scope of security architecture that integrates well
scenarios where the administrative and identity-related challenges. Consider the functional com- with our other applications.
ponents of an identity management solution, and the Oracle
burden of account management Thanks to this hot-pluggable
products that address them.
for distributed users can be over- architecture, Ingersoll Rands
Access and identity. A key aspect of identity management is
whelming, he says. administering users and their privileges and controlling access to
application developers didnt
Ingersoll Rand is a good applications and enterprise resources. Oracle Access Manager need to be experts in identity
example of how this works. The provides centralized access management for heterogeneous management to take advantage
company, which provides prod- environments and administrative capabilities such as delegated of Oracle Access Manager soft-
ucts, services, and integrated solu- administration and identity self-service functionality. ware, which passes authenti-
tions to industries ranging from Federation. As organizations move to extend IT access to cated users to each application.
transportation and manufacturing users outside the company, they need solutions that will ensure Oracle Access Manager gives us
to food retailing, construction, security and enable practical connectivity with external parties. a best-of-breed security solution,
and agriculture, experienced Oracle Identity Federation provides cross-domain single sign- and weve reduced our need to
steady growth partly due to its on and helps large corporations securely link their business worry about ever-changing secu-
partners into a corporate portal or extranet while complying with
strong dealer channel. As Ingersoll rity standards, says McDonald.
regulatory and security requirements.
Rand grewand its applications Essentially, we have moved that
Provisioning. Identifying and administering users is one thing;
proliferatedit needed a way to job to Oracle, and we depend
provisioning them is another. Oracle Identity Manager automati-
simplify access to applications and cally manages user access privileges across heterogeneous on Oracle to maintain security
improve user lifecycle manage- resources throughout their full lifecycle, from original creation to and encryption.
ment. The company used identity eventual deprovisioning.
management to streamline inter- Directory. For many organizations, a key component of identity MANAGING USERS EFFECTIVELY
actions with its partners. management is a centralized directory that serves as the central Just as identity management
Prior to implementing our user repository. Oracle Internet Directory simplifies user admin- technologies enable organiza-
dealer portal, our dealers had to istration and provides a standards-based, scalable application tions such as Burlington Coat
visit separate Web sites, based on directory for heterogeneous enterprises. Factory and Ingersoll Rand
brand, to access content about Virtual directory. Virtual directories are important for providing to streamline internal opera-
orders, warranties, and sales and views of enterprise information without synchronizing or moving tions, they also help technol-
data from its native location. Oracle Virtual Directory provides
marketing, says Jim McDonald, ogy companies expand their
scalable, reliable LDAP and XML views of existing enterprise
IT manager at Ingersoll Rand. customer bases. For Transfer
information regardless of where it is physically located.
Having multiple Web sites created Web services management. As Web services proliferate,
Solutions BV, an Oracle partner
confusion for our dealersthey organizations need solid ways to manage them. The Oracle Web and systems integrator based
didnt always know which Web Services Manager solution adds policy-driven identity manage- in the Netherlands, being able
site to visit to accomplish particu- ment technology to existing or new Web services. to offer a portfolio of security
lar tasks. Added frustration came solutions is an important part

50 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

Chris Lundell, Network Administrator, Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse,
says that the company uses Oracle Internet Directory as its primary identity
management hub.
of winning new projects. Our customers are definitely con-
cerned about the security of their data and applications, says
Bert Dondertman, technical architect at Transfer Solutions.
As a result, identity management and application security are
becoming more important to our business.
Transfer Solutions recently completed a project for the
Employers Insurance Organization in the Netherlands that
will encompass approximately 3,000 users by the end of
2006. Transfer Solutions integrated Oracle Internet Directory
with Microsoft Active Directory to enable single sign-on for
users via native Kerberos authentication on the Windows
platform. The users benefit because they have one identity
and dont have to separately log into multiple applications,
says Dondertman. For our part, allowing Oracle to manage
security means we have to configure only one component,
instead of developing specialized code. Its much quicker.
Its certainly easier than designing applications and applica-
tion security the old-fashioned way. Several years ago, every
application had its own identity management capabilities,
and as a result there were many places in a company where
user information was stored, says Dondertman. But that is
very difficult to maintain, he adds. When someone leaves
the company, for example, every system needs to be updated.
It can be a huge problem if you overlook one of them.
However, with an integrated identity management approach,
modifying access privileges when an employees position
changes or a new employee is added becomes much easier.
SECURE FROM ALL ANGLES
Security attacks on company and personal dataand business
managers awareness of IT security needshave increased dra-
matically in recent years. These needs are addressed by security
and identity management products, which have evolved from
niche products that are applicable to specific instances to more-
generalized infrastructure solutions that can be leveraged across

Meeting Compliance Challenges

Regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, HIPAA,
and the European Data Privacy Directive seek to
provide greater visibility into business processes,
and companies have often responded by imple-
menting comprehensive internal control frame-
works. The regulatory impact includes requirements
to secure access to information by controlling who
has access to it and to create documentation for
process, application, and IT controls, whether these
controls are corrective, detective, or preventive.
Organizations affected by these regulatory require-
ments often have to certify periodically (every three
to six months) that only appropriate individuals have
access to critical information systems; they also
must be able to prove compliance for an internal or
external audit team.
Many of the common control deficiencies that
auditors look for occur when identity management
CATHERINE GIBBONS
access either when an employee leaves or is pro-
moted, thus accumulating privileges to applications
for which the employee no longer needs access.
Further compliance issues arise when password
policies are not enforced across all systems, and
when users have access to applications that conflict
from a business perspectivesuch as when a
clerk with rights to the purchasing system also has
access to the accounts payable system.
Compliance requirements drive investment in
identity management technology, which addresses
these control deficiencies by providing a framework
to manage users and their access rights. And the
urgency to implement comprehensive access and
security solutions is increasingly global.
Judging by our own customer base, these
regulatory drivers often cut across national
boundaries, says Harald Collet, director of risk
have exposure on U.S. stock exchanges or on
U.S. financial markets. Chinese banks may be
concerned about corporate governance require-
ments when they have to raise public debt in
international markets. Japanese organizations are
facing the new Japan Corporate Governance Act,
which will go into effect in 2008. These global
security and regulatory issues that are driven by
the interconnected capital markets require the
same kinds of protections for financial information
and customer information everywhere.
Data privacy is one issue that cant be
addressed in just one part of the business. Data,
application, and access requirements must be
addressed globally through consistent authorization
policies. When it comes to security, our customers
are focused on regulatory compliance, says Collet.
That reflects the new operational reality faced by

is still built into each individual application, and mul- assurance solutions at Oracle. Many of our many companies. Addressing compliance issues
tiple applications need to be managed. These defi- European customers are concerned about data is one way that organizations can keep their data
ciencies include, for example, a delay in terminating privacy or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act since they may safe, secure, and confidential.

ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 51
Oracle and non-Oracle environments. For example, Oracle
Security Developer Tools, which ship with Oracle Application
Server, are pure Java toolkits that can be used to enable federa-
tion and interoperability between client and server resources
in many types of IT environments. According to Howard Bae,
product manager for identity and access management at Oracle,
these tools support everything from low-level cryptographic
algorithms to certificate management. They also include secure
messaging capabilities such as S/MIME and CMS, along with
application-programming interfaces for XML security, Web ser-
vices security, digital signatures, and encryption. This makes it
easier for developers to build centralized security and identity
management capabilities into applications from the start
rather than having to retrofit solutions after the fact.
We know of no security needs that cannot be satisfied
by Oracle Identity Management, says Open Data Systems
Jucan. For example, in environments where LDAP directories
already exist, Open Data uses Oracle Virtual Directory to inte-
grate with Oracle Internet Directory. In other instances, the
company uses Oracle Access Manager to enable self-service
We wanted to minimize the impact to the existing application footprint to keep
registration of corporate users and to manage the provisioning costs down, says Jim McDonald, IT Manager, Ingersoll Rand. Oracle Access
of privileges and user profiles across multiple systems. Manager integrates well with our other applications.
Oracle Access Manager also streamlines the reporting and
auditing of user profiles while providing single sign-on and keting, Oracle. You dont want to hard-code security logic
enforcing access policies. into individual Web services. Instead, you want to point each
With Oracles expanded identity management offerings, pertinent Web service to a centralized security server, where
we have a complete toolset at our fingertips, says Jucan. they can subscribe to a centrally maintained security policy.
Oracle Identity Management can provision anythingeven This addresses the same problem that identity management
for the most-complex IT environments that weve seen. All addressed for user-to-application communication a decade ago.
the tools have been seamlessly integrated into one suite to Ingersoll Rand has found the business value in centralizing
further simplify development and deployment. identity management and providing single sign-on. We have
a complex and heterogeneous technical environment, says
IDENTITY MANAGEMENT AND SOA McDonald. We run applications in .NET, J2EE, and even
As more organizations adopt service-oriented architectures Lotus Domino. With Oracle Asset Managers hot-pluggable
(SOAs), the issue of identity management expands beyond architecture, it was relatively easy to integrate them all. Now
simply managing user identities to encompassing discrete when our dealers sign into one application, they are signed
business services. When into all of themregardless of the underlying technology.
you start working with The key focus of this project was making it simple for dealers
SNAP SHOT distributed services, where to do business with Ingersoll Rand. When our independent
Burlington Coat Factory applications need to call dealers look to expand their product offerings, we want them
www.burlingtoncoatfactory.com out to other applications to think of Ingersoll Rand first. We think that making it easier
Location: Burlington, New Jersey and services to request a to do business with us is the first step. Thats really the value
Industry: Clothing, home furnishings price quote or something proposition for us. O
Number of employees 30,000 similar, you need to be
Oracle products: Oracle Database,
able to verify the identity David A. Kelly (dkelly@upsideresearch.com) is a business, technology, and
Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle
Data Warehouse, Oracle Internet Directory,
and access rights of all travel writer who lives in West Newton, Massachusetts. David Baum (david@
Oracle Retail Price Management, Oracle the distributed pieces, dbaumcomm.com) is a freelance business writer based in Santa Barbara, California.
Human Resources, Oracle Portal says Burton Groups
Neuenschwander.
Ingersoll Rand SOA security is all
www.irtools.com about ensuring that READ more about identity management
CATHERINE GIBBONS

Location: Hamilton, Bermuda oracle.com/products/middleware/identity-management/

Industry: Industrial manufacturing
Number of employees 40,000
Oracle products: Oracle Access Manager
application-to-application
identity-management.html
communication is secure,
LEARN about information security
says Wynn White, senior oracle.com/solutions/security
director of security mar-

52 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
 _______________________________________________________________________________________
Security
Identity
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ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 53
 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
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F5

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Oracle applications are critical to your business. Its import-
ORACLE MAGAZINE
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misuse. Thats where F5 comes in.
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54 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
 d e v e l o p e r FRAMEWORKS
A New Face on the Block
Oracle ADF offers new JSF support and enhanced, visual, declarative development.
racle JDeveloper 10g Release
3 (10.1.3) improves the J2EE
development experience from
every point of view. Released
in February 2006, it provides slick new
refactoring features that make iterative
code improvements a snap. It also offers
new teamwork support that simplifies
collaborative development, and it
provides all-around enhancements
for visual, declarative development
that make it easier than ever to build
enterprise Web and desktop applica-
tions. This column highlights some
of the main new Oracle Application
Development Framework (ADF) Release
3 (10.1.3) features, by building a set of
Web search pages using the JavaServer
Faces (JSF) standard.
JDEV AND JSF
In the past, J2EE developers had to
choose among several competing
approaches to build Web user interfaces
(UIs). In 2005, however, JSF emerged to
become the standard approach for Web
user interface development with the
J2EE platform. JSF simplifies the process
of building Web UIs, by introducing
Web UI components that have attri-
butes, events, and a consistent runtime
API. Instead of wading knee-deep
through tags and scripts, with JSF you
assemble Web pages by using a growing
set of libraries that contain off-the-shelf,
data-aware components that adhere to
this new standard.
The original designers of JSF incor-
porated several declarative development
techniques to simplify the Web develop-
ment process. They included the use
of a standard expression language to
bind components to data, automatically
managed JavaBeans that can hold event-
handling code, and automatic page
request handling and page navigation. If
you use Oracle JDeveloper 10g Release 2
(10.1.2) for Web applications, youll find
these concepts quite familiar.
Oracle JDeveloper 10g Release 3
(10.1.3) introduces many new fea-
tures that enhance JSF development.
The visual page flow diagram lets you
design how end users navigate between
pages in your application. The visual
page designer lets you drag-and-drop
components from a palette, rearrange
them on-screen, set the properties that
control their look and behavior, and
bind them to data.
The ADF Faces component library
provides about 100 enterprise-grade JSF
components to use in your pages, and
the Data Control Palette makes it easy to
drop data-bound controls, input forms,
tables, trees, and master/detail combina-
tions using these components. Oracle
ADF has been enhanced to directly
support JSF, so the process of building
JSF pages that display and modify data
is the same code-free experience youve
come to expect from previous releases.
The simplest way to get acquainted
with JSF and Oracle ADF in Oracle
JDeveloper 10g Release 3 is to create
some simple pages that you may have
built before with previous releases. Ill
construct two kinds of search pages
to show the productivity improve-
ments youll find when using the
current version, compared to Oracle
JDeveloper 10g Release 2. In particu-
lar, youll find that tasks that used to
require code to accomplish are now
100 percent declarative.
CREATING A SEARCH PAGE AND USING
BIND VARIABLES
Lets start by creating a new application
by selecting File->New from the main
menu and then selecting General->
Application and clicking OK in the
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BY STEVE MUENCH
New Gallery dialog box. In the Create
Application dialog box, enter an applica-
tion name, select the Web Application
[JSF, ADF BC] application template,
and click OK. Oracle JDeveloper will
create a new application workspace with
a Model project for the business com-
ponents, along with a ViewController
project for the JSF pages that comprise
the Web user interface. Next, right-click
the Model project; select New; and
under Business Tier->ADF Business
Components, start the Business
Components from Tables wizard that
youve seen in previous columns to
create a default ADF entity object, view
object, and application module for
working with data from the EMP table
in the SCOTT schema. When creat-
ing these components, give them the
names Emp (EO), EmpView (VO), and
DemoModule (AM), respectively.
Next, lets look at a new 10.1.3
feature that lets you add named bind
variables to view objects. Double-click
the EmpView view object to open the
editor, select Bind Variables, and click
New to define a bind variable named
EmployeeName of type String. You
could enter a default value for the bind
variable, but for now leave it blank and
it will default to NULL. Next, select
the Control Hints tab for this vari-
able, enter Name Starts With as the Label
Text hint, and click OK. Add a second
bind variable named MinSal of type
Number with a default value of zero (0).
Enter Salary Greater Than as its Label Text
control hint, and click OK. Next, visit
the SQL Statement panel to reference
these bind variables in the view objects
WHERE clause. In the Query Clauses
section, enter ENAME LIKE UPPER
(:EmployeeName)||% AND SAL > :MinSal in
the Where field, and click OK.
At this point, Ive enhanced the
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 55
FRAMEWORKS
EmpView view object to accept two
named bind variables. Now Ill show
how easy it is to leverage these named
bind variables in a JSF search form.
To create a new JSF page, right-
click the ViewController project and
select New to open the New Gallery
dialog box. Under Web Tier->JSF,
launch the new JSF JSP page wizard.
On step 1 of the wizard, for File Name
enter the name SearchUsingBindVars
.jsp and click Finish. The visual page
designer opens, and the Data Control
Palette should appear. If you dont
see it, select the View->Data Control
Palette menu item. Expanding the tree
display in the Data Control Palette, find
the EmpView1 view object instance
and, nested inside it, an Operations
folder. Expand that folder to see the
new ExecuteWithParams built-in
action for executing a view object
with named bind variables. Drag the
ExecuteWithParams action and drop
it onto the empty page in the visual
designer. In the Create menu that
appears, select ADF Parameter Form
in the Parameters category. In the Edit
Form Fields dialog box that appears,
click OK to create a parameter form
with all of the bind variables in the
EmpView1 view object.
You should now see two labeled
text fields on your page, along with
an ExecuteWithParams button. This
parameter form allows the end user to
enter a value for either or both of the
view objects named bind variables.
When the user clicks the button, the
values will be assigned to their respec-
tive variables and the view objects query
will be executed.
Next, add a table that shows the
results of the query. To do this, select
EmpView1 in the Data Control Palette
and drop it onto the page below the
parameter form. In the Create menu that
appears, select ADF Read-only Table
in the Tables category. In the Edit Table
Columns dialog box that appears, select
all EmpView1 attributes to be shown in
the table, select both the Enable selec-
tion and Enable sorting check boxes,
and click OK.
Believe it or not, youve just finished
56 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
building your first JSF page with full
search functionality. Run the page by
selecting Run from the right-mouse
context menu, and experiment with it
by entering values for the two search
form fields. It doesnt get much easier
than this.
This approach of using named bind
variables and a parameter form based
on the ExecuteWithParams built-in
action is perfect in cases where youre
always searching on the same fixed set
of parameters. If, however, you need to
let the end user mix and match any set
of query-by-example criteria, you should
build the search using find mode. Ill
walk through those steps next.
CREATING A SEARCH PAGE USING FIND MODE
Create a second JSF page, named
SearchingUsingFindMode.jsp. To
create the search area on the page,
drag EmpView1 from the Data Control
Palette and drop it onto the page as an
ADF Search Form (in the Forms cat-
egory). By default, Oracle JDeveloper
creates a search form field for each attri-
bute. Looking in the Structure Window,
you can see that it creates the UI con-
trols inside a container control called an
af:panelForm. Select that panel form
control, go to the Property Inspector
panel, and enter 3 as the value of its
Rows property to lay out the fields in
the panel form in three rows. Next, drag
EmpView1 in the Data Control Palette
and drop it on the page below the
search form as an ADF read-only table
(in the Tables category). As before, keep
all the attributes and enable selecting
and sorting.
If you were to run the form now,
you would have a page with a form that
allows both searching and editing, along
with a table that displays the results.
Most Web users, however, expect search
fields at the top of the screen always to
function as search fields, rather than as
a toggle between search and edit modes.
You can make this change by performing
just a few additional steps.
In order to have some UI con-
trols display the results of the search
while others stay fixed in find mode,
you need to introduce a second itera-
tor binding for the same EmpView1
view object. With two iterators, you
can force one to stay in find mode
while the other remains in regular
display results mode. To add a
second iterator, open the pages page
definition by right-clicking on an
empty area of the page and select-
ing Go To Page Definition from the
context menu. This step opens the
SearchUsingFindMode.xml page defini-
tion file in the code editor and shows
its structure in the Structure Window.
Notice that the page definition file
contains an executables section as well
as a bindings section. The executables
section lists all of the iterators related
to data that your page displays. The
bindings section lists the binding
objects that connect your pages UI
controls to attributes of the underlying
data collections. To add a new iterator,
right-click the executables node in the
Structure Window and select Insert
inside executables > iterator. In the
Iterator Binding Editor dialog box
that appears, expand the data control
to show your EmpView1 view object
instance and select it. In the Iterator Id
field, change the name of the iterator to
EmpView1ResultsIterator, to reflect the fact
that it will be used to show the results
of the query, and click OK. Next, go to
the bindings section of the page defini-
tion, and edit the table binding named
EmpView1 by right-clicking it and
selecting Properties. In the Select an
Iterator list at the bottom, change the
table binding to be bound to the new
EmpView1ResultsIterator, and shuttle
all of the attributes from the Available
list into the Display Attributes list.
Click OK.
The last step requires forcing
the original EmpView1Iterator to
always stay in find mode. With Oracle
JDeveloper 10g Release 2 this step
required writing code, but in the 10.1.3
release it is declarative. In the Structure
Window for the page definition, right-
click EmpView1Iterator in the execut-
ables section, and select Insert before
EmpView1Iterator > invoke Action.
In the Insert invokeAction dialog
box that appears, give the binding
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FRAMEWORKS
a name by setting the id property to
ForceFindMode and select the Find
action binding from the Binds list. The
invokeAction is a declarative facility in
the page definition to invoke an action
binding during page processing.
On the Advanced Properties tab,
create a Boolean expression for the
RefreshCondition property that indi-
cates when the invokeAction should
invoke its action binding. Since invok-
ing the built-in Find action will toggle
the iterator in and out of find mode, it
should be invoked only when the user
is not in find mode. To enter the correct
Expression Language (EL) expression for
this condition, you can use the new EL
expression builder in Oracle JDeveloper
10g Release 3. To do so, click the (...)
button next to the RefreshCondition
field. In the EL expression builder dialog
box that appears, expand the ADF
Bindings folder, the bindings node
beneath it, and the EmpView1Iterator
node to see its properties. Select its find-
Mode property and click the (>) button
to insert the appropriate EL expression
that represents that iterator property. The
expression ${bindings.EmpView1Iterator
.findMode} appears in the Expression
field. With the cursor just inside the
closing curly brace, click the (==) button
in the Logical Operators section and
type the word false to end up with the
expression ${bindings.EmpView1Iterator
.findMode == false}. Click OK, and then
click OK again to dismiss the Insert
invokeAction dialog box.
This last step completes the declara-
tive configuration of the second search
form. This involved changing the table
binding to display the results using this
results iterator and forcing the initial
iterator to always stay in find mode. As
a final touch, you can flip back to the
visual editor and delete the Find button
and af:outputText control that mentions
Find Mode since you wont be needing
them. Just select each one and use the
delete key to remove them. You can now
run your SearchingUsingFindMode.jsp
and experiment with the search fields
at the top. Although this search page
required a few more steps, it still didnt
require writing a line of code.
58 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
FINE-TUNING THE RESULT
To further improve the search page
youve just built, you can take advantage
of a few more declarative features of
the Oracle ADF/JSF combination. One
common feature of search pages is to
avoid displaying any initial results until
the end user has a chance to enter some
search criteria. You can easily accom-
plish this in Oracle ADF Release 3 by
just setting one additional configuration
parameter on the page definition.
Visit the page definition again for
the SearchingUsingFindMode.jsp page,
and select EmpView1ResultsIterator in
the executables section of the Structure
Window. Go to the Property Inspector,
click in the RefreshCondition prop-
erty, and click the (...) button. In the
EL expression builder dialog box that
appears, expand the JSF Managed
Beans folder and the adfFacesContext
node beneath it, and select its postback
property. Click the (>) button to insert
the EL expression that represents that
property. The expression ${adfFacesContext
.postback} appears in the Expression
field. With the cursor just inside the
closing curly brace, click the (==) button
in the Logical Operators section, type
the word true to end up with the expres-
sion ${adfFacesContext.postback == true},
and click OK. This postback property
on the ADF Faces context object evalu-
ates to false when a page first displays.
When the user interacts with a UI
control on the page, a postback event is
sent to the server to be processed, and
the postback property changes to true.
By referencing this postback expression
as the value of the RefreshCondition
property of the iterator binding, the
iterator remains unbound for the current
page request when postback evaluates
to false. As a result, when you now run
the SearchingUsingFindMode.jsp page, it
will not initially display any data.
When you run the page, you should
notice that the data doesnt initially
appear, but an empty table appears
showing the words No rows yet. As
a final touch, configure the table not
to display at all when the page initially
renders. To do this, select the table in
the visual editor. At any point, you can
tell exactly what component is selected
by looking at the Structure Window
or in the tag strip at the bottom of
the visual editor window. If you dont
initially select the table, you can use
these other two mechanisms to quickly
select the containing element that you
want. With the table selected, go to the
Property Inspector to change the value
of its Rendered property. With that
property selected, click the Bind to data
button in the Property Inspector toolbar
to bring up the EL expression builder.
Use the same steps you just used, above,
to enter the expression #{adfFacesContext
.postback == true}, and click OK. Since
this expression evaluates to true only
when the user clicks a button in the
form, the Rendered property of the table
will evaluate to false when the page ini-
tially displays, and the table will disap-
pear from view.
With just a few steps, youve built
two styles of search pages using JSF and
Oracle ADF. For a more in-depth intro-
duction to the new features in Oracle
ADF and Oracle JDeveloper for JSF devel-
opment, I recommend reading the ADF
Developers Guide for Forms/4GL Developers
on OTN (oracle.com/technology/
documentation/jdev/b25947_01). I also
recommend visiting the Oracle JDeveloper
page on OTN (oracle.com/technology/
products/jdev), where youll find links to
a number of interesting tutorials. O
Steve Muench is a consulting product manager for
Oracle JDeveloper. In his more than 16 years at Oracle,
he has supported and developed Oracle tools and XML
technologies and continues to evangelize them. He
authored Building Oracle XML Applications (OReilly &
Associates, 2000) and shares tips and tricks on OTN
(oracle.com/technology) and his Dive into BC4J and
ADF blog (radio.weblogs.com/0118231/).
READ more about Oracle
JDeveloper 10g and Oracle ADF
oracle.com/technology/products/jdev
oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/tips/
muench/designpatterns
DOWNLOAD Oracle JDeveloper 10g
oracle.com/technology/products/jdev
 d e v e l o p e r ODP.NET
Improve ODP.NET Performance
Take advantage of connection pooling, fetch size controls, and statement caching.
or features and performance,
Oracle Data Provider for .NET
(ODP.NET) is your best choice
for connecting .NET applications
with Oracle Database.
Performance-related features that
enable your applications to consume
fewer database resources and therefore
perform and scale better are built into
the provider. Three of these features are
connection pooling, controlling fetch
size, and statement caching.
I ran some tests to confirm that these
features could improve application
performance. I used version 10.2.0.2.0
of both ODP.NET and Oracle Database
for all tests in this article. Note that the
statement caching feature was added in
ODP.NET version 10.1.0.3.
CONNECTION POOLING OVERVIEW
Creating a physical connection to a
database can be an expensive operation
in terms of time and system resources.
During the busiest times, applications
with precreated connections that can be
allocated when needed perform better
than when applications create the con-
nections on demand. Using the connec-
tion pooling feature of ODP.NET, your
application can create and maintain a
ready pool of precreated connections.
By default, connection pooling is
enabled in the provider. You can turn
connection pooling on or off by setting
Poolinga Boolean connection string
attributeto either TRUE or FALSE,
respectively. (Other connection string
parameters that control various aspects of
connection pooling are fully documented
in the ODP.NET documentation.)
When your application uses connec-
tion pooling, the provider creates a pool
of connections based on the connection
string signature. The signature is based
on the connection string parameter
values. If any one of the connection
string parameters is modified, ODP.NET
will create a new connection pool for
your application when the next connec-
tion is requested.
Subsequent connection requests can
use a connection from the pool rather
than go through the process of creating
a new connection. When your appli-
cation is finished using a connection,
the Close or Dispose method returns
the connection to the pool rather than
physically closing or destroying it. Note
that for nonpooled connections, it is
best to call the Dispose method, because
it explicitly frees system resources.
CONNECTION POOLING IN ACTION
The sample code for this column dem-
onstrates one technique for measur-
ing the performance benefit of using
connection pooling. The code in
JulyAug2006.csavailable for down-
load with the online version of this
article and in Listing 1 in the online
article, at oracle.com/technology/
oramag/oracle/06-jul/o46odp.html
creates two connection strings: one that
uses connection pooling and one that
does not. The code then opens and
closes the connections in a loop. The
number of iterations is controlled by a
parameter passed into the test method.
The connection string with
no connection poolingwhere
Pooling=FALSEuses the sample HR
user and the default password:
string no_pool =
User Id=hr;
Password=hr;
Data Source=oramag;
Enlist=false;
Pooling=false
The connection string with connec-
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BY M A R K A. WI LLI AMS
tion poolingwhere Pooling=TRUE
also uses the sample HR user and the
default password:
string with_pool =
User Id=hr;
Password=hr;
Data Source=oramag;
Enlist=false;
Pooling=true
The main method calls each of
the member methods to perform
the tests. One member method
ConnectionPoolTestcaptures the
current time, executes the connection
testing loop, and captures the current
time again. The code then calculates the
difference between the two time intervals.
On my test system, I achieved the
following results with an iteration value
of 100:
Beginning Connection Pool Test with
100 iterations...
No Pooling: 7.8312608 total seconds.
With Pooling: 0.1301872 total seconds.
As you can see, with no connection
pooling, the loop executed in almost
8 seconds. With connection pooling,
the loop executed in approximately .13
secondsdramatically quicker.
Making specific connection pooling
parameter recommendations is dif-
ficult, because workloads can vary
greatly. One general recommendation
is to have a sufficiently high minimum
pool size. I have often seen connection
pools drained to the minimum during
a lull in activity. When activity picks
up rapidly, the connection pool has to
create connections quickly rather than
use connections in the pool. In most
cases, the application server reduces
the number of connections and remains
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 59
ODP.NET
relatively idle. Thus, there is no reason
to have a low minimum pool size.
CONTROLLING FETCH SIZE
Retrieving data from the database tier
to the middle tier (or client tier) is
one of the most expensive operations
with respect to performance. If the end
user consumes a lot of data, you will
want your application to minimize the
number of round-trip data fetches.
By default, ODP.NET will read
64KB of data from a result set at
a time. You change this value by
setting the FetchSize attribute for an
OracleDataReader object. However,
rather than arbitrarily setting the fetch
size, ODP.NET provides the ability to
control the number of rows that are
fetched from a result set per round trip.
The two properties you use to do this
are RowSize and FetchSize.
RowSize is a property of the
OracleCommand object, and the value
for this property is assigned by ODP.NET
when the statement associated with
the command object is executed. You
explicitly set the value of the FetchSize
property. For example, if you want to
retrieve 100 rows at a time from the
result set per round trip, you set the
FetchSize property:
dr.FetchSize = cmd.RowSize * 100;
Here, dr represents an
OracleDataReader and cmd represents
an OracleCommand object.
FETCH SIZE BENEFITS
To illustrate the benefits of controlling
fetch size, I used SQL*Plus to create a
simple new tablefetch_testin the
HR sample schema:
create table fetch_test
( ment. (See the ODP.NET column in the
id number primary key,
data varchar2(32)
);
and populated it with 100,000 rows:
begin
for i in 1..100000 loop
60 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
insert into fetch_test
values (i, to_char(i, 000000));
end loop;
end;
/ using five different row values. The
You could also use a tool suite such
as Oracle Developer Tools for Visual
Studio .NET to accomplish this. Be sure
to issue a COMMIT after populating the
table if you are using a tool that does
not do so by default.
After populating the table with data, I
gathered statistics so the optimizer could
determine the appropriate way to access
the data. I used the dbms_stats package:
begin
dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(
ownname => HR,
tabname => FETCH_TEST,
estimate_percent => null,
method_opt => for all indexed
columns size 1,
cascade => TRUE);
end;
/ data set (with only two small columns).
Next I performed a test similar
to that used for connection pooling:
capture the current time, set the fetch
size to an appropriate value, read the
data from the result set, capture the
current time again, and compute the dif-
ference. I created a test method called
FetchTest to set the fetch size and read
the datait accepts an integer param-
eter that controls the number of rows to
be fetched. To set the fetch size and read
the data, I used the following:
OracleCommand cmd = con.
CreateCommand();
cmd.CommandText = select * from
fetch_test;
OracleDataReader dr = cmd.
ExecuteReader();
dr.FetchSize = cmd.RowSize *
numRows;
while (dr.Read())
{ increase the performance benefits of bind
rowsFetched++;
}
I then executed the test method,
results of the tests are summarized here:
ROWS TIME
________ __________________________
1 5.4378192 seconds
10 1.1115984 seconds
100 0.2703888 seconds
1000 0.200288 seconds
10000 0.1902736 seconds
As you can see, if you are tempted to
fetch only a single row at a time to save
resources and increase performance (I
have sometimes heard this advice), you
will actually be dramatically reducing,
rather than increasing, runtime perfor-
mance. In addition, for this set of data,
there is not much performance increase
when fetching more than 1,000 rows at
a time. Of course, this is also a narrow
Apply this technique to a result set
representative of your environment to
determine optimal values for setting
your fetch size.
Of course, there is a cost if the fetch
size is arbitrarily large. More client-side
memory and processor cycles will be
needed to store and manage a larger
amount of data. The goal is to find a
high-performing balance between the
number of round trips and the amount
of data retrieved per trip.
STATEMENT CACHING
Using bind variables in your application
is a good practice. Bind variables can help
ensure that Oracle Database can reuse
SQL statements in your session and in
other sessions that may use the same state-
September/October 2005 issue of Oracle
Magazine, at oracle.com/technology/
oramag/oracle/05-sep/o55odpnet.html,
for more details on the benefits of bind
variables.) For those applications about
which you know, at design time, which
statements will be reused, you can further
variables by using a feature exposed by
ODP.NET known as statement caching.
When you use statement caching,
you are telling Oracle Database to
keep a copy of the statement cached
in memory on the server, because you
will be reusing that statement in your
session. This allows Oracle Database to
more quickly use that statement upon
subsequent executions. Note that state-
ment caching does not increase the
runtime performance of the statement
itself. Statement caching allows Oracle
Database to find the statement in a
memory area that is associated with your
session, rather than all sessions, and
avoid reparsing the statement. Keep in
mind that the statement, not the data,
is cached. Executing a cached statement
always returns the latest database results.
You enable the statement caching
feature by setting the Statement Cache
Size connection string parameter. The
default value of this parameter is 0,
meaning that statement caching is dis-
abled by default. You set this parameter
to the number of statements you plan to
keep cached during your applications
lifetime. For example, if you plan to
cache 16 statements, you will set this
value to 16. ODP.NET will then cache
the 16 most recently used statements.
The 17th most recently used statement
is aged out of the cache by the last 16
unique statements.
With statement caching enabled,
ODP.NET will automatically cache any
statement you execute. If you have
enabled statement caching and you do
not want to place a statement in the
cache, set the AddToStatementCache
property on OracleCommand to false:
OracleCommand cmd =
new OracleCommand();
cmd.Connection = con;
cmd.AddToStatementCache = false;
cmd.CommandText = select data from
fetch_test where id = :1;
SQL and PL/SQL statements can be
stored in the statement cache.
STATEMENT CACHING RESULTS
I employed the same pattern to test
statement caching as I did for connec-
tion pooling and controlling the fetch
size. I used the fetch_test table to repeat-
edly select data without using statement
caching and then repeated the same test
with statement caching.
Here is the connection string for the
test without statement caching:
string constr =
User Id=hr;
Password=hr;
Data Source=oramag;
Enlist=false;
Pooling=true;
And here is the connection string for the
test with statement caching:
string constr =
User Id=hr;
Password=hr;
Data Source=oramag;
Enlist=false;
Pooling=true;
Statement Cache Size=1;
Note that I set the cache size to only 1.
This is because I knew that I would be
caching only a single statement. The
bind variable may change, but the state-
ment will remain cached. If a literal value
were used instead of a bind value, Oracle
Database would need to reparse the state-
ment every time the literal value changed,
instead of using the cache. In addition,
the new statement would replace the
statement currently in the cache.
I executed the sample statement
1,000 times without statement caching
and 1,000 times with statement
caching, which produced these results
on my system:
No Statement Caching:
0.6409216 total seconds.
With Statement Caching:
0.3905616 total seconds.
The latest ODP.NET releases use a
Windows Registry parameter that turns
on statement caching by default and
sets the cache size to 10. The registry
ORACLE MAGAZINE
setting applies to all applications using
this ODP.NET instance. You can override
the registry value for each connection
pool by setting Statement Cache Size to
another value.
GOING FURTHER
I performed all of these tests on a single
laptop hosting both the database and
the client application. Although it is
convenient to test features in such an
environment, for best results test your
applications in an environment that
accurately reflects your production envi-
ronment. When the client and database
server are on separate machines, the per-
formance improvement should be even
greater. Of course, your tests are almost
certain to show different numbers in the
results than those presented here.
This investigation limited per-
formance observations to time only.
However, other performance benefits
include reduced network traffic and
reduced parsing in the database. I
encourage you to work with your system
administrators to develop tests and
measurement techniques applicable to
your environment. By using the features
offered by ODP.NET, you can increase
performance in your applications with a
minimum of effort. O
Mark A. Williams (mawilliams@cheshamdbs.com)
is an Oracle ACE, an Oracle Certified Professional
DBA, and the author of Pro .NET Oracle Programming
(Apress, 2004). He focuses on solutions for Oracle on
Windows and contributes to the Oracle Data Provider
for .NET forums on Oracle Technology Network.
READ online-only column content
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06-jul/
o46odp.html
VISIT .NET Developer Center
oracle.com/technology/dotnet
DOWNLOAD
the sample code for this column
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06-jul/
o46odp.zip
ODP.NET 10g
oracle.com/technology/tech/windows/odpnet
Oracle Developer Tools for Visual
Studio .NET
oracle.com/technology/tech/dotnet/tools
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 61



 


  



 


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 d e v e l o p e r BROWSER-BASED
Single-Step Deployment
Oracle Application Express deploys an application with a single file.
ith Oracle Application
Express 2.2, when you
build an application you
want to share, you can create
a single file that comprises the export
database objects, application compo-
nents, and all. To demonstrate how
simple it is to take advantage of this new
convenience feature, this column walks
you through the process of building a
simple employee lookup application and
then packaging up that application for
single-step deployment.
STEP 1: SET UP THE TABLE, PHOTO-
RENDERING PROCEDURE, AND SEED DATA
To get started, create (or have your
Oracle Application Express administra-
tor create) a new Oracle Application
Express workspace. Once youve logged
into the workspace, run om_employees
.sql to create the OM_EMPLOYEES table
in your schema, along with its trigger
and constraints. To run the script
1. Click SQL Workshop.
2. Click SQL Scripts.
3. Click Upload.
4. Click Browse; select the om_
employees.sql script, available with the
online version of this article, at oracle
.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06-jul/
o46browser.html; click Open; and
click Upload.
5. On the resulting page, click the om_
employees.sql icon.
6. Click Run, and then click Run on the
Confirmation screen.
Repeat steps 2 through 6, uploading and
then running the om_download_pict
.sql and seed_data.sql scripts (available
in the o46browser.zip file).
STEP 2: CREATE THE APPLICATION
Now create a simple two-page applica-
tion based on OM_EMPLOYEES:
1. Click the Application Builder tab.
BY R A J MATTAMAL
codeLISTING 1: Modified query
select EMPLOYEE_ID,
NAME_FIRST,
NAME_LAST,
TITLE,
EMAIL,
PHONE_OFFICE,
PHONE_MOBILE,
STREET_ADDRESS,
CITY,
STATE,
ZIP_CODE,
HIRE_DATE,
USERID,
(select userid from OM_EMPLOYEES ome2 where ome2.employee_id=ome.manager_id)
Manager,
MIME_TYPE,
BLOB_CONTENT
from OM_EMPLOYEES OME
where
...
<snip>
2. Click Create. 2. In the Buttons section, click the
3. Accept the default Create Create link and then click Delete to
Application option, and click Next. delete page 1s Create button. Confirm
4. Enter Oracle Magazine Employees in the deletion when prompted.
the Name field, and click Next. 3. In the Regions section, click the
5. Select Report and Form as the page OM_EMPLOYEES link to edit the
type, select OM_EMPLOYEES as the query used by the report. In the Region
tablename, and click Add Page. Source text box, add a table alias of OME
6. Click Next to continue. Click Next to the OM_EMPLOYEES table used in
again on each of the subsequent pages the query and replace the MANAGER_ID
(Tabs, Shared Components, Attributes, column with this inline select statement:
User Interface), accepting the defaults,
to complete the wizard. (On the User (select userid from OM_EMPLOYEES ome2
Interface page, select a theme other than where ome2.employee_id =
the defaultTheme 1, if you like.) ome.manager_id)
7. Click Create on the last page
(Confirmation) of the wizard. 4. Add a column alias Manager to the
inline query above, so it can serve as a
STEP 3: MODIFY THE APPLICATION TO ALLOW column heading in the resulting report.
EMPLOYEES TO UPLOAD PHOTOS Listing 1 shows an excerpt of the relevant
The next step is to modify the two gen- code (in bold) for the modified query to
erated pages so that the application is add to the Region Source text box.
read-only, while allowing users to upload 5. Click the Report Attributes tab.
photos to their respective detail pages. 6. Deselect the Show check box for the
1. In the listing of pages shown for the MIME_TYPE and BLOB_CONTENT
application, click the OM_EMPLOYEES columns.
link for page 1. 7. Click Apply Changes.
ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 63
BROWSER-BASED
Make page 2 read-only. Enter 2 in the
Page field, and click Go to navigate to
page 2 of the application.
1. In the Buttons section, click the
Create link and then click Delete to
delete page 2s Create button. Confirm
the deletion when prompted.
2. In the Buttons section, click the
Delete link and then click Delete to
delete page 2s Delete button. Confirm
the deletion when prompted.
3. In the Items section, click the P2_
NAME_FIRST item link and make it
read-only by first clicking the Read
Only navigation button and then click-
ing the rust-colored [always] link.
4. Click the right arrow (>) in the navi-
gation section to go to the next item.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each item
until you finish P2_USERID and get to
P2_MANAGER_ID.
6. For P2_MANAGER_ID, in the
Name region for Display As, select
Display as Text (based on LOV, does
not save state).
7. For P2_MANAGER_IDs Label attri-
bute, enter Manager.
8. In P2_MANAGER_IDs List of Values
section, in the List of values definition
field, enter this query:
select userid, employee_id
from om_employees
9. Click the right arrow to navigate to
the next item (P2_MIME_TYPE).
10. For P2_MIME_TYPE, click the
Conditions navigation button, select
Never as the condition type, and then
click the right arrow to navigate to the
P2_BLOB_CONTENT item.
Modify page 2 to support photo display.
The application should display a photo
only if one is actually stored in the
table. If theres no photo stored, and the
userid in the table matches that of the
logged-in user, the page should display
an Upload button. To provide these
capabilities, make these changes to the
P2_BLOB_CONTENT item:
1. Click the Label navigation button,
and enter Photo in the Label field.
2. Click the Source navigation button,
and for the source type, select PL/SQL
Expression or Function.
64 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
3. Then in the Source value or expres-
sion field, enter
htf.img (#OWNER#.om_download_pict?
p_id=||:P2_EMPLOYEE_ID)
4. Click the Conditions navigation
button, and for the condition type,
select Exists (SQL Query returns at
least one row).
5. In the Expression 1 field, enter this
query:
select 1 from OM_EMPLOYEES where
:P2_EMPLOYEE_ID = employee_id and
blob_content is not null
6. Click Apply Changes.
The online version of this column,
at oracle.com/technology/oramag/
oracle/06-jul/o46browser.html, includes
the final steps for modifying the applica-
tion to allow users to upload and store
a photo.
STEP 4: PACKAGE UP THE APPLICATION
After you try out the application, you
might decide that others might find it
useful enough to install in their own
Oracle Application Express instances. To
this end, the last step is packaging up
the application for single-step deploy-
ment to another instance.
1. In the breadcrumb links in the upper
left-hand corner of the screen, click
the Application nnn link (where nnn
corresponds to the ID of the employee
lookup application in your Oracle
Application Express instance).
2. Click the Edit Attributes icon, and
then click Deployment.
3. Click Edit Deployment.
4. In the Welcome section, enter readme
text for the application in the Message
field, such as This application lets users
browse employee information. Users
accessing the application with a USERID
stored in the table can upload a photo if
one does not already exist.
5. Click the right arrow to go to the
Prerequisites tab.
6. To ensure that folks who already have
a table named OM_EMPLOYEES in their
schemas dont run into a conflict with
this script, enter OM_EMPLOYEES in the
first Object Names field.
7. Click the Scripts tab.
8. Click Create.
9. Click the Copy from SQL Script
Repository icon.
10. Enter Create Table, Sequence, and
Trigger in the Name field, and click
Next.
11. Select om_employees.sql, and
click Create Script.
12. Repeat steps 9 through 11 for the
om_download_pict.sql and seed_data
.sql scripts. Feel free to name these
scripts as you see fit.
13. Click the Deinstall tab, and click
Create.
14. Click the Create from File icon.
15. Click Browse, select the drop_om_
objects.sql script (included with this
columns download file), click Open,
and click Create Script.
16. Click the right arrow.
17. Select Yes for Include Deployment
Attributes in Export.
18. Click Apply Changes.
And thats it. Now when you export
this application, everything comes with
it: the DDL, the seed data, and the
Oracle Application Express application
definition. To move the application to
another Oracle Application Express 2.2
instance, simply import and install the
single export file. O
Raj Mattamal (raj.mattamal@oracle.com) is a principal
product manager in Oracles Server Technologies
division. He has been with Oracle since 1995.
READ online-only column content
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06-jul/
o46browser.html
LEARN more about
Oracle Application Express
oracle.com/technology/products/database/
application_express
DOWNLOAD
Oracle Database 10g
oracle.com/technology/software/products/
database/oracle10g
Oracle Application Express
oracle.com/technology/products/database/
application_express/download.html
sample application code
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06-jul/
o46browser.zip
 t e c h n o l o g y PL/SQL PRACTICES
On Conditional Compilation
Apply best practices to PL/SQL conditional compilation.
hat is PL/SQL conditional com-
pilation, how does it work, and
how can I learn more about it?
Oracle Database 10g has
been groundbreaking when it comes
to the world of PL/SQL development,
most notably in the evolution of the
PL/SQL compiler. This PL/SQL
Practices column focuses on the Oracle
Database 10g Release 2 feature known
as conditional compilation.
Oracle Database 10g Release 1
offered an optimizing compiler and
compile-time warnings. The PL/SQL
optimizer automatically transforms
code so that it can run more efficiently
(this optimizer is different from the
cost-based optimizer, which Oracle
Database uses to optimize the execu-
tion of SQL statements). Oracle esti-
mates that you can expect to see your
PL/SQL statements execute, on average,
in half the time they took in earlier
versions of Oracle Database. (Note that
the PL/SQL compiler affects only
PL/SQL statements, not SQL state-
ments, within your programs).
The compile-time warnings give
you feedback on programs that might
compile but could still be improved.
These warnings include recommenda-
tions on how and when to apply the
NOCOPY parameter hint to reduce
parameter-passing overhead, identify
functions that contain one or more
branches of logic that will not execute
a RETURN statement, and much more.
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 takes
PL/SQL another big step forward, by
adding support for conditional com-
pilation. We can now use conditional
compilation to direct the compiler
to conditionally include or exclude
selected parts of a program, based on
conditions specified with conditional
compilation directives, statements, and
identifiers prefixed by a dollar sign ($).
One particularly nice aspect of
conditional compilation is that text
that is excluded during conditional
compilation need not be legal PL/SQL;
this gives you tremendous flexibility
when writing programs that need to
work differently in different versions of
Oracle Database.
There are many ways PL/SQL con-
ditional compilation can benefit your
application development process.
The following are a few of the most
common ways to apply PL/SQL condi-
tional compilation to your applications:
O
Write a single program unit that auto-
matically takes advantage of version-
specific features of Oracle Database.
You no longer need to maintain the
same basic logic in multiple files, one
for Oracle9i Database and another
for Oracle Database 10g, or rely on
SQL*Plus substitution variable logic to
achieve the same effect.
O
Run or expose portions of your code
during testing, and then hide that code
when it goes into production. This
technique is particularly valuable for
tracing code execution and unit-testing
private package subprograms.
O
Improve the maintainability of your
PL/SQL code base, by soft-coding
elements of your application that
would otherwise have to be hard-
coded as literals.
To take advantage of conditional
compilation, add compiler directives
(commands) to your code. The PL/SQL
compiler will then evaluate the direc-
tives before compilation occurs and
determine which parts of your program
text cause the generation of executable
code. The modified source code is then
passed to the compiler for compilation.
There are three types of directives:
Selection directives. Use the $IF direc-
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BY STEVEN FEUERSTEI N
tive to evaluate expressions and deter-
mine which code should be included in
the compiled code.
Inquiry directives. Use the $$ identifier
syntax to refer to conditional compila-
tion flags. These inquiry directives can
be referenced within an $IF directive or
used independently in your code.
Error directives. Use the $ERROR
directive to report compilation errors
based on conditions evaluated when
Oracle Database prepares your code
for compilation.
Oracle has also added two packages
to support conditional compilation: the
DBMS_DB_VERSION package, which
you can use to analyze the version (in
both absolute and relative terms) of the
instance of Oracle Database to which
you are connected, and the DBMS_
PREPROCESSOR package, which
allows you to see your code after all
conditional compilation directives have
been executed.
Availability of conditional compilation.
PL/SQL conditional compilation is avail-
able in Oracle Database 10g Release 1
and later (from 10.1.0.4 onward). In
Oracle Database 10g Release 2, condi-
tional compilation is enabled by default,
and it cannot be disabled.
In Oracle Database 10g Release 1,
conditional compilation is enabled
by default, but you can disable it
by setting an underscore parameter.
Conditional compilation is also sup-
ported in Oracle9i Database Release 2
(from 9.2.0.6 onward); it is disabled by
default, but you can enable it by setting
an underscore parameter.
In order to disable conditional com-
pilation in Oracle Database 10g Release
1 or enable it in Oracle9i Database,
contact Oracle Support for information
on the conditional compilation under-
score parameter.
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 65
PL/SQL PRACTICES
Get more information on conditional
compilation. This column offers some
insights into conditional compilation,
by answering reader questions. You will
certainly want to study this feature in
more depth before applying it to your
application code base. I suggest that
you check out the following:
O
Conditional Compilation in Oracle
Database 10g Release 2. Hands down the
best elaboration of conditional com-
pilation, this white paper by PL/SQL
Product Manager Bryn Llewellyn offers
96 pages of detailed explanations and
examples, including a case study of
how to use conditional compilation
with unit testing. Find it at oracle
.com/technology/tech/pl_sql/pdf/Plsql_
Conditional_Compilation.pdf.
O
Oracle documentation on conditional
compilation. Oracle Database PL/SQL
Users Guide and Reference is available at
download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_
01/appdev.102/b14261/fundamentals
.htm#BABIHIHF.
O
My PL/SQL programming book.
Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 4th
Edition, by Steven Feuerstein with Bill
Pribyl: Chapter 20, Managing PL/SQL
Code, explores conditional compila-
tion and offers several examples.
GET IT RIGHT WITH THE ERROR DIRECTIVE
I often find myself working on multiple program
units, fixing some and developing others anew.
As I move around between them, I sometimes
have to leave work half finished. What do
you think is the best way to indicate that this
program unit is incomplete and keep track of
what needs to be done?
Include to-do lists in your program
source code!
You could come up with a standard
comment indicating incomplete, please
finishsomething like this:
/* INCOMPLETE START
Note to self: add logic to
iterate through collection
*/
...
...
code
/* INCOMPLETE END */
You can then search your files for
the comment indicator. One problem
66 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
codeLISTING 1: LIST_TO_COLLECTION function and attempted compilation
SQL> CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION list_to_collection (
2 string_in IN VARCHAR2
3 , delimiter_in IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT ,
4 )
5 RETURN DBMS_SQL.varchar2a
6 IS
7 l_next_location PLS_INTEGER := 1;
8 l_start_location PLS_INTEGER := 1;
9 l_return DBMS_SQL.varchar2a;
10 BEGIN
11 IF string_in IS NOT NULL
12 THEN
13 WHILE ( l_next_location > 0 )
14 LOOP
15 -- Find the next delimiter
16 l_next_location :=
17 NVL (INSTR ( string_in, delimiter_in, l_start_location ), 0);
18
19 IF l_next_location = 0
20 THEN
21 -- No more delimiters, go to end of string
22 l_return ( l_return.COUNT + 1 ) :=
23 SUBSTR ( string_in, l_start_location );
24 ELSE
25 $ERROR
26 list_to_collection INCOMPLETE!
27 Finish extraction of next item from list.
28 Go to || $$PLSQL_UNIT || at line || $$PLSQL_LINE
29 $END
30 END IF;
31 l_start_location := l_next_location + 1;
32 END LOOP; 33 END IF;
34 RETURN l_return;
35 END list_to_collection;
36 /
Warning: Function created with compilation errors.
SQL> SHOW ERRORS
Errors for FUNCTION LIST_TO_COLLECTION:
LINE/COL ERROR
--------------------- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
25/13 PLS-00179: $ERROR: list_to_collection INCOMPLETE!
Finish extraction of next item from list.
Go to LIST_TO_COLLECTION at line 28
with this approach, however, is that want to remind myself about it later. So
your program, although incomplete, I use the $ERROR directive to remind
might still compile, giving you or me of the task and also use the special
someone else a mistaken impression of inquiry directives, $$PLSQL_UNIT and
the state of that code. $$PLSQL_LINE, to show the name of
It would certainly be better to be able the program unit and the line number,
to not only include a comment about when I try to compile the program.
the state of your code but also stop it Listing 1 shows the list_to_
from compiling, so that you are imme- collection function and the results of
diately and unambiguously informed attempting compilation.
about the state of your program. You The error directive is, by the way,
can do this with the conditional compi- handy under all sorts of circumstances.
lation error directive, $ERROR. Suppose, for example, that I would
Here is an example. I am writing like to make sure that a particularly
a program to parse a delimited string complex and compute-intensive
into a collection. I cant finish the final program is always compiled with the
SUBSTR operation at this time and maximum optimization level. I can
simply include a selection directive codeLISTING 2: COMPUTE_INTENSIVE_PROGRAM
that checks the value of the PL/SQL SQL> CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE compute_intensive_program
compilation parameter with the 2 IS
$$PLSQL_OPTIMIZE_LEVEL ccflag, 3 BEGIN
4 $IF $$PLSQL_OPTIMIZE_LEVEL <> 2
combined with the error directive, in 5 $THEN
the definition of the program unit, as 6 $ERROR
shown in Listing 2. 7 compute_intensive_program must be compiled with maximum optimization!
8 $END
Finally, you should consider using 9 $END
the error directive to catch case not 10 NULL; -- Lots and lots of code here...
found situations. Listing 3 shows 11 END compute_intensive_program;
12 /
an example. It relies on the ALTER
SESSION command to set the value for Warning: Procedure created with compilation errors.
a ccflag, which can then be referenced
SQL> SHOW ERRORS
within a selection directive. Errors for PROCEDURE COMPUTE_INTENSIVE_PROGRAM:

FORALL AND EVERY VERSION OF PL/SQL LINE/COL ERROR

--------------------- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I love the FORALL feature that Oracle added
6/4 PLS-00179: $ERROR: compute_intensive_program must be compiled
to PL/SQL in Oracle8i Database. I use it with maximum optimization!
whenever possible to implement high-speed
DML processing. I am also writing code that
must work on Oracle9i Database and Oracle
Database 10g. I was very excited to see that
codeLISTING 3: Using the error directive to catch case not found
Oracle Database 10g offers the INDICES OF SQL> ALTER SESSION SET PLSQL_CCFLAGS = current_user_type:1
2 /
and VALUES OF clauses to allow me to use
FORALL with sparsely filled collections. Id Session altered.
love to take advantage of FORALL, but I dont
SQL> CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE user_types
want to maintain two different sets of code, 2 IS
one for Oracle9i Database and the other for 3 administrator CONSTANT PLS_INTEGER := 1;
Oracle Database 10g. How would you suggest 4 enduser CONSTANT PLS_INTEGER := 2;
5 END user_types;
I do that? 6 /
Take full advantage of every version
of PL/SQL. Yes, FORALL is quite won- Package created.

derful, isnt it? And you should take SQL> CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE show_info
maximum advantage of every nuance 2 IS
of that featurebut managing multiple 3 BEGIN
4 $IF $$current_user_type = user_types.administrator 5 $THEN
sets of code is a real chore. 6 DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE (Administrator!);
Sounds like a job for conditional 7 $ELSIF $$current_user_type = user_types.enduser
compilation, along with the new 8 $THEN
9 DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE (End user!);
DBMS_DB_VERSION package. This 10 $ELSE
package contains a set of constants 11 $ERROR Current user type of || $$current_user_type || is not known. $END
that provide both absolute and relative 12 $END
13 END show_info;
information about the version of Oracle 14 /
Database in which you are executing
your code. Procedure created.

For example, in Oracle Database 10g
Release 2, this package is defined as
shown in Listing 4.
Now lets apply this package to help
us write one program that will auto-
matically use the INDICES OF clause of
FORALL if it is available.
First, I create a table and a package
specification that contains a procedure
that facilitates the bulk insert of rows
into the table:
SQL> ALTER PROCEDURE show_info COMPILE
2 PLSQL_CCFLAGS = current_user_type:0
3 REUSE SETTINGS
4 /
Warning: Procedure altered with compilation errors.
SQL> show errors
Errors for PROCEDURE SHOW_INFO:
LINE/COL ERROR
--------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/4 PLS-00179: $ERROR: Current user type of 0 is not known.

ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 67
PL/SQL PRACTICES
CREATE TABLE otn_demo (
num NUMBER, name VARCHAR2(100))
/ version constant pls_integer := 10; -- RDBMS version number
CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE
otn_demo_insert
IS
TYPE otn_demo_aat
IS TABLE OF otn_demo%ROWTYPE
INDEX BY PLS_INTEGER;
PROCEDURE insert_rows (
rows_in IN otn_demo_aat);
END otn_demo_insert;
/ IS
Next, the package body: The
insert_rows procedure uses INDICES
OF if I am running Oracle Database
10g or higher. If I am running Oracle9i
Database Release 2 or earlier, I copy
the contents of my possibly sparse
collection over to a densely filled col-
lection. In both cases, I take advantage
of record-level inserts, as shown in
Listing 5.
So I have one program unit to main-
tain but a code base that automatically
takes maximum advantage of the available
set of features. Nice stuff!
Lets look at one more example.
Oracle Database 10g introduced new
floating-point datatypes, BINARY_
FLOAT and BINARY_DOUBLE. They
offer improved performance for heavy
number crunching. The following
program automatically declares a local
variable to be BINARY_FLOAT if the
datatype is available. Otherwise, it
settles for the traditional NUMBER.
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE
crunch_numbers
IS
n $IF DBMS_DB_VERSION.VER_LE_9_2
$THEN NUMBER;
$ELSE BINARY_FLOAT;
$END
BEGIN
$IF DBMS_DB_VERSION.VER_LE_9_2
$THEN n := 1.0;
$ELSE n := 1.0f;
$END
DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ( n );
END crunch_numbers;
/ tool for PL/SQL programs (www.unit-test.com).
68 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
codeLISTING 4: DBMS_DB_VERSION package definition
CREATE OR REPLACE package dbms_db_version is
release constant pls_integer := 2; -- RDBMS release number
ver_le_9_1 constant boolean := FALSE;
ver_le_9_2 constant boolean := FALSE;
ver_le_9 constant boolean := FALSE;
ver_le_10_1 constant boolean := FALSE;
ver_le_10_2 constant boolean := TRUE;
ver_le_10 constant boolean := TRUE;
end dbms_db_version;
/
codeLISTING 5: OTN_DEMO_INSERT package body
CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY otn_demo_insert
PROCEDURE insert_rows ( rows_in IN otn_demo_aat )
IS
BEGIN
$IF DBMS_DB_VERSION.VER_LE_9_2
$THEN
DECLARE
l_dense otn_demo_aat;
l_index PLS_INTEGER := rows_in.FIRST;
BEGIN
WHILE (l_index IS NOT NULL)
LOOP
l_dense (l_dense.COUNT + 1) := rows_in (l_index);
l_index := rows_in.NEXT (l_index);
END LOOP;
FORALL indx IN 1 .. l_dense.COUNT
INSERT INTO otn_demo VALUES l_dense (indx);
END;
$ELSE
FORALL indx IN INDICES OF rows_in
INSERT INTO otn_demo VALUES rows_in (indx);
$END
END insert_rows;
END otn_demo_insert;
/
Note that in this case, I use condi-
tional compilation to interrupt a regular
statement: The selection of the datatype
READ
occurs within the declaration of the vari-
more about conditional compilation
able n. I dont have to use conditional Oracle Database PL/SQL Users Guide
compilation only to choose between two and Reference
download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/
or more intact, executable statements. appdev.102/b14261/fundamentals.htm#BABIHIHF
For more questions and answers on white paper and presentation
PL/SQL conditional compilation, check oracle.com/technology/tech/pl_sql/pdf/
Plsql_Conditional_Compilation.pdf
out Best Practice PL/SQL at oracle.com/ oracle.com/technology/tech/pl_sql/pdf/
technology/pub/columns/plsql. O Plsql_Conditional_Compilation_PPT.pdf
READ more
Steven Feuerstein (steven@stevenfeuerstein.com) is Best Practice PL/SQL
oracle.com/technology/pub/columns/plsql
considered one of the worlds leading experts on the
Oracle PL/SQL language, having written 10 books on Feuerstein
oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/344
the subject, including Oracle PL/SQL Programming
DOWNLOAD
and Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices (OReilly Media).
Oracle Database 10g
Feuerstein serves as a senior technology advisor for oracle.com/technology/software/products/
Quest Software and is currently building a unit testing database/oracle10g
 t e c h n o l o g y SQL
Build Custom Aggregate Functions
Summarize data in new ways by writing your own aggregate functions.
ne aspect of Oracle
Database Ive long
found very powerful
is the ability to write
custom procedural code and
combine it with relational pro-
cessing. Such code often takes
the form of a stored function to
be invoked from a SELECT or
other statement. The creation
and use of single-row functions
in Oracle Database is well
understood, but did you know
that you can also create your
own aggregate functions? You
can, and more easily than you
might think. This article shows
you how.
THE SCENARIO
Suppose you work for a car rental
company. You have the table shown in
Listing 1 with one row representing
each car rental to a customer. (You
can create the data by using the
CustomAggregatesData.sql script, available
with the sample code for this article, at
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06-
jul/o46sql.zip.) For each rental, you have
a time out and a time in (the rental_out
and rental_in columns). Time out
corresponds to when the customer picked
up the car, and time in is the time at
which the car was returned. Your
table stores these two values as type
TIMESTAMP. Your job is to produce
various reports based on averaging of the
rental time periods. For example, you
want to be able to determine the average
rental period by state and to compare
each rental period with a moving average.
Your use of the TIMESTAMP types
ALLISON LEVENSON
makes computing the duration of each
individual rental a trivial matter. You
simply subtract one TIMESTAMP from
the other, and the result is an interval of
BY JON ATH AN GENNI CK
For many, this problem
might lead to running pro-
cedural code on the client
to retrieve and summarize
large amounts of data across
the network through cursor
loops, with all the atten-
dant performance and scal-
ability problems that such
an approach might bring.
Knowing how to write
aggregate functions,
however, makes this
problem nothing more than
a slight speed bump.
WRITING AN AGGREGATE
FUNCTION
Figure 1 shows conceptually
type INTERVAL DAY TO SECOND: how an aggregate functionany type of
aggregate functionmust be evaluated.
SELECT rental_in - rental_out First you must have some sort of initial-
FROM car_rental; ization. Then you pass in several values
as input to the function. Finally you
RENTAL_IN-RENTAL_OUT receive back a single result.
A custom aggregate function accepts
6 6:0:0.0 exactly one parameter. Each input value,
5 10:48:55.0 then, represents a separate row from a
8 6:41:0.0 table or query result. There is no support
...
for writing custom aggregate functions
that accept multiple parameters.
Computing the average rental Writing an aggregate function in
period quickly turns into a less-trivial Oracle Database is a matter of creating
job, however: an object type with a method corre-
sponding to each of the phases in Figure
SELECT AVG(rental_in - rental_out) 1, plus one additional method to support
FROM car_rental; parallel evaluation. Figure 2 illustrates
the methods involved.
SQL Error: ORA-00932: When evaluating an aggregate function
inconsistent datatypes: against a group of values, Oracle
expected NUMBER Database does the following:
got INTERVAL DAY TO SECOND 1. Invokes ODCIAggregateInitialize
to create an instance of the type youve
The built-in aggregate function AVG created to implement the aggregation.
does not support the interval types (and This instance is known as an aggrega-
the same holds for SUM, by the way). tion context.
ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 69
SQL
2. Invokes ODCIAggregateIterate in a
loop that passes in all the values in the
group to be aggregated.
3. Invokes ODCIAggregateTerminate to
generate the single result value.
This process is the simplest form of
aggregation. Oracle Database may also
parallelize the operation, by splitting the
data into chunks, running these steps
on each chunk, and then making one
or more ODCIAggregateMerge calls to
combine the results from each chunk into
a single result.
CREATING THE TYPE
Returning to the car rental scenario, your
task is to write an aggregate function to
compute the average of a group of car
rental durations expressed as INTERVAL
DAY TO SECOND values. Begin by cre-
ating an object type to implement the
aggregate function methods. Listing 2
shows the specification for an object type
named AvgInterval. Listing 3, available
with the online version of this article at
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06-
jul/o46sql.html, shows the object type
body. You must implement at least the
methods shown in Listing 2. These
include the three methods for beginning,
feeding, and terminating the aggregation,
as well as the one method for merging
results from parallel evaluation. All
methods must return a NUMBER, which
is a success/fail status value. You can
rename the parameters, but the number
and order of the parameters and their
purposes are fixed.
As part of the object type, define any
variables needed to maintain the state of
the aggregation as it progresses. How you
maintain state is up to you and depends
on how you choose to implement your
aggregation logic. Its reasonable to use
a running sum and count to compute
an average (although other approaches
are possible), so the following two vari-
ables are defined near the top of the
AvgInterval specification in Listing 2:
runningSum INTERVAL DAY(9)
TO SECOND(9),
runningCount NUMBER,
runningSum is defined with the
70 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
Values
Values
Initialize Values
Iterate
Terminate
Figure 1. How an aggregate function is evaluated
ODCIAggregateInitialize
ODCIAggregateIterate
ODCIAggregateMerge
ODCIAggregateTerminate
Figure 2. Aggregate function methods
maximum precision (9) for both the day
and the fractional-second components.
The default is to allow only two digits
for the day and only six past the decimal
point for the fractional seconds. Allowing
for the maximum precision in both
cases makes AvgInterval generally useful
over any INTERVAL DAY TO SECOND
values, regardless of their precision.
Next in the AvgInterval specification
come the member function declarations
for the ODCIAggregate interface. These
can be in any order, but lets begin at the
beginning, with the initialization function:
...
STATIC FUNCTION ODCIAggregateInitialize
( actx IN OUT AvgInterval
) RETURN NUMBER,
...
Oracle Database invokes this function
to initialize an aggregation. The one
argument will be of the underlying type
you are creating to implement the aggre-
gate function (in this case, AvgInterval).
Generally speaking, the purpose of the
ODCIAggregateInitialize function is to
create a new instance of the underlying
Values
Values
Result
ODCIAggregateInitialize
ODCIAggregateIterate
object type and then to initialize the
instance variables used in computing the
aggregation result. The STATIC keyword
allows Oracle Database to invoke this
function independently of whether
an instance of the type already exists.
ODCIAggregateInitialize is the only one
of the ODCIAggregate functions to be
defined as STATIC.
The object instance returned by
ODCIAggregateInitialize becomes the
aggregation context. If you invoke the
same aggregate function several times in
a single statement, Oracle Database will
create at least one context for each invo-
cation. If Oracle Database parallelizes
execution, it will create a context for
each execution thread.
In Listing 3, you can see the code
behind ODCIAggregateInitialize. For
now, focus on the case in which the input
parameter is null. The code invokes the
types implicitly defined constructor to
create a new instance of the type. The two
values passed to the constructor corre-
spond to runningSum and runningCount,
and both are initialized to 0.
Next, look at ODCIAggregateIterate
in Listing 3. It is the workhorse function
of the aggregation type. Oracle Database codeLISTING 1: Car_rental table
will invoke the function once per row
CAR_ID CUST_ID RENTAL_STATE RENTAL_OUT RENTAL_IN
once for each value feeding into the
aggregation. The logic here is simple: 1 101 MI 05-MAR-06 08.00.00.00 AM 11-MAR-06 02.00.00.00 PM
1 102 MI 12-MAR-06 08.34.24.00 AM 17-MAR-06 07.23.19.00 PM
1 103 MI 17-MAR-06 11.19.00.00 PM 26-MAR-06 06.00.00.00 AM
self.runningSum := self.runningSum + val;
1 104 MI 28-MAR-06 09.45.15.00 AM 30-MAR-06 03.27.13.00 PM
self.runningCount := self.runningCount + 1; 2 113 WI 06-MAR-06 08.00.00.00 AM 11-MAR-06 02.00.00.00 PM
2 114 WI 13-MAR-06 08.34.24.00 AM 17-MAR-06 07.23.19.00 PM
As each new value comes into the 2 115 WI 18-MAR-06 11.19.00.00 PM 26-MAR-06 06.00.00.00 AM
2 116 WI 29-MAR-06 09.45.15.00 AM 30-MAR-06 03.27.13.00 PM
aggregation, the function adds that
value to a running sum and increments

...
the counter. After all values have been
processed, Oracle Database invokes codeLISTING 2: AvgInterval type specification
ODCIAggregateTerminate, shown in
CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE AvgInterval
Listing 3, which uses the two running AS OBJECT (
values to compute the average:
runningSum INTERVAL DAY(9) TO SECOND(9),
runningCount NUMBER,
returnValue := self.runningSum /
self.runningCount; STATIC FUNCTION ODCIAggregateInitialize
( actx IN OUT AvgInterval
) RETURN NUMBER,
Do be aware of the possibility that a
context will be initialized and terminated MEMBER FUNCTION ODCIAggregateIterate
for an empty group. Given the compu- ( self IN OUT AvgInterval,
val IN DSINTERVAL_UNCONSTRAINED
tation shown here for returnValue, an ) RETURN NUMBER,
empty group would result in a divide-
by-0 error. The code in Listing 3 avoids MEMBER FUNCTION ODCIAggregateTerminate
( self IN AvgInterval,
the division, and thus the resulting error, returnValue OUT DSINTERVAL_UNCONSTRAINED,
when the running count is 0. (A divide- flags IN NUMBER
by-0 in this articles scenario will manifest ) RETURN NUMBER,

itself as an ORA-01873: the leading pre- MEMBER FUNCTION ODCIAggregateMerge

cision of the interval is too small error.) (self IN OUT AvgInterval,
Note in Listing 3 the datatype ctx2 IN AvgInterval
) RETURN NUMBER
used for ODCIAggregateIterates val
argument, namely DSINTERVAL_ );
UNCONSTRAINED, which is equivalent /

to INTERVAL DAY(9) TO SECOND(9).

It is necessary to use the unconstrained
type, because you cannot specify preci-
sion in a parameter list. You cannot,
however, use the unconstrained type for
the running sum.
4. ODCIAggregateIterate invoked in selfso that it reflects the combination
parallel on all threads: 1, 2, and 3 of the first and secondctx2contexts.
5. ODCIAggregateMerge invoked to Youre computing an average, so you can
merge, for example, threads 2 and 3 add the running sums and counts:
6. ODCIAggregateMerge invoked to
...

The last member function to look
at is ODCIAggregateMerge, also shown
in Listing 3. Recall from Figure 2 that
aggregation can be parallelized. Oracle
Database will create separate aggregation
contexts for each parallel execution
merge thread 1 with the result from step 5
7. ODCIAggregateTerminate invoked to self.runningSum :=
generate a final result self.runningSum + ctx2.runningSum;
Oracle Database invokes self.runningCount :=
ODCIAggregateMerge with two argu- self.runningCount + ctx2.runningCount;
ments. Each is an aggregation context: RETURN ODCIConst.Success;
...

thread. Assuming three parallel threads,

the sequence of events becomes
1. ODCIAggregateInitialize invoked for
thread 1
2. ODCIAggregateInitialize invoked for
thread 2
3. ODCIAggregateInitialize invoked for
thread 3
MEMBER FUNCTION ODCIAggregateMerge
(self IN OUT AvgInterval, The effect of this merge operation is
ctx2 IN AvgInterval that the running sum and count in self
) RETURN NUMBER IS (the first context in the argument list)
now reflect the values they would hold if
The job of the merge function is to all values had been passed through that
change the first aggregation context one context. The ctx2 context is no longer

ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 71
SQL

necessary. (If you ever write a custom (rental_in rental_out) as nicely ordered as mine.) Of course,
aggregate in a language such as C or Java FROM car_rental you probably would not want DBMS_
and youve allocated memory or some GROUP BY rental_state; OUTPUT calls in production code.
other resource to the ctx2 context, release Behind the scenes, Oracle Database
that memory or resource at this point in RE AVG_INTERVAL(RENTAL_IN-RENTAL_O... does quite a bit of housekeeping work
the process.) -------- for you:
MI +000000005 12:31:08.250000000 O
It groups the data.

DEFINING THE FUNCTION MN +000000003 12:07:43.250000000 O
It filters out nulls (as required by the

After you create the object type and WI +000000004 12:31:08.250000000 ISO SQL standard).
methods for implementing a new aggre- O
It parallelizes.

gate function, you must create a linkage The code for this article contains All you have to worry about when
between the function name you want to calls to DBMS_OUTPUT. If you run the writing the underlying ODCI methods is
use from SQL and the underlying type. preceding SELECT from SQL Developer, two things: how to summarize a single
Do that by using a statement such as: enable the viewing of DBMS_OUTPUT group of values and how to merge two
by clicking the Enable DBMS Output groups. You even get free support for
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION avg_interval toolbar icon on the DBMS Output analytic syntax.
( x DSINTERVAL_UNCONSTRAINED tab of the SQL Worksheet. (From The online version of this article
) RETURN DSINTERVAL_UNCONSTRAINED SQL*Plus, issue the SET SERVEROUTPUT continues with a discussion of analytic
PARALLEL_ENABLE ON command.) Then execute the query, syntax and framing.
AGGREGATE USING AvgInterval; and youll see how Oracle Database
/ invokes the various ODCI methods on BE CREATIVE
the underlying AvgInterval type: Custom aggregate functions open the
This statement creates the function door to an interesting world of possibili-
avg_interval, which has a single argu- NULL INIT ties. You could write a SUM function that
ment that is compatible with any Iterate +000000006 06:00:00.000000000 returns 0 instead of null when no rows
INTERVAL DAY TO SECOND value. Iterate +000000005 10:48:55.000000000 are in a group. You could write a MUL
The PARALLEL_ENABLE clause enables Iterate +000000008 06:41:00.000000000 function to generate the product of a
...

parallelism. The AGGREGATE USING group of numbers by multiplying them

clause links the avg_interval function to NULL INIT all (a request I actually encountered a few
the underlying AvgInterval type. Invoke Iterate +000000005 06:00:00.000000000 months ago). You can even easily solve
avg_interval, and Oracle Database will Iterate +000000004 10:48:55.000000000 the not-unheard-of problem of concat-
invoke the various member functions on Iterate +000000007 06:41:00.000000000 enating all the string values in a group.
...

AvgInterval to generate your results. Custom aggregate functions can be a

NULL INIT powerful tool for solving SQL problems. O
USING THE NEW FUNCTION Iterate +000000003 14:37:00.000000000
Using this new avg_interval aggregate Iterate +000000003 00:48:55.000000000 Jonathan Gennick (Jonathan@Gennick.com) is
function couldnt be simpler: Invoke it Iterate +000000007 12:41:00.000000000 an experienced Oracle professional and member of
...

the same way as any built-in aggregate the Oak Table Network. He wrote the best-selling
function. You can easily compute the Terminate 0+000000066 SQL Pocket Guide and the Oracle SQL*Plus Pocket
average rental period over all rentals: 06:13:39.000000000 Reference, both from OReilly Media.
Terminate 0+000000028
SELECT avg_interval 01:01:46.000000000
(rental_in - rental_out) Terminate 0+000000054
FROM car_rental; 06:13:39.000000000 READ online-only article content
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06-jul/
o46sql.html
AVG_INTERVAL(RENTAL_IN-RENTAL_OUT) The three occurrences of NULL INIT READ more about
show how Oracle Database creates a custom aggregate functions
+000000004 15:25:17.000000000 new aggregation context for each group. Oracle Database Data Cartridge Developers Guide
download-east.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/
The Iterate lines show the values feeding appdev.102/b14289/toc.htm
And you can just as easily compute into each group. Finally, Oracle Database
Find Answers Faster
the average rental period by state: invokes the terminate method once oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/05-mar/
per group to generate the final results. o25dba.html

SELECT (If you are running on a multi-CPU DOWNLOAD sample code for this article
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06-jul/
rental_state, system, parallelism may occur, and then o46sql.zip
avg_interval your DBMS_OUTPUT results wont be

72 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
 t e c h n o l o g y XML
Archiving Data Using XML
Build a powerful, flexible data archive.
cme Insurance Company is
ready to archive data more than
three years old to tape and to
delete it from the production
database. The companys IT architects
have suggested an archive strategy that
also uses transportable
tablespaces, and the pro-
duction tables have been
carefully partitioned on the
transaction date with this
specific objective in mind.
According to the origi-
nal archiving plan, the
partitions with data more
than three years old would
be converted into stand-
alone tables by use of parti-
tion exchange, and then
the tablespaces containing
those tables could be trans-
ported to tape and dropped
from the main database. If
deleted data needed to be
reinstated, the tablespaces
transported earlier could be
restored from tape and plugged back
into the main database. Transporting
tablespaces and exchanging parti-
tions do not modify data, so they do
not produce UNDO and REDO and
therefore perform significantly better
than the traditional approaches for data
movement, such as using INSERT and
DELETE statements. And if the archived
data needed to be searched for some
information, it would be as simple as
querying the standalone tables created
during partition exchange.
The plan would be perfect, but
there is a problem. As part of other
projects, the IT architects are planning
incremental changes to the structure
of the production tables. Columns will
GIL ADAMS
be added and dropped, datatypes will
be changed, constraints will be modi-
fied, and so on. The moment a tables
structure is modified, it will no longer
be possible to plug the tablespace
transported earlier back into the main
database, because the table structures
will not match!
John, the companys lead DBA, has
been called back from his vacation to
find a way to make the archiving strat-
egy work in a world of changing data-
base structures.
AN XML SOLUTION
John puts down his luggage, rolls up his
sleeves, and summarizes the archiving
requirements in five main points:
1. The data must be archived based on
its age.
2. The archived data must be dropped
from the main database without much
performance impact.
3. Reinstating the archived data must be
quick and easy.
4. The solution must allow for table
structures to change.
5. It must be possible to search inside
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BY A RU P N A N DA
the archived data without restoring it to
the main database.
Johns solution is to use XML as the
format for the archived data.
DBAs and programmers at Acme,
responding to Johns solution, express
concern that their applica-
tions have been developed
to use the relational model
with regular tables, that these
applications and tables cant
handle XML data, and that
there isnt time for a thorough
impact analysis.
John responds that the
programs will still see the data
as relational, even though the
storage is actually in XML.
THE ARCHIVAL TABLE
John offers an explanation of
the XML archiving solution to
the concerned programmers
and DBAs, starting with a
representative tableTRANS
from their database, created
and loaded as shown in Listing 1. The
TRANS table has been partitioned on
the TRANS_DATE column, with the
idea that after three years, the oldest
partition can be transported off and
dropped. Because dropping a partition
has virtually no impact on database per-
formance and generates very little REDO
and UNDO information, this is also a
faster way to purge data than methods
such as deletion and truncation.
However, because the production
table structure needs to change, John
explains that Acme will need to create
another table specifically for archiving.
The columns in this archive table
will not be the same as the columns
in the production table; most of the
column values from the production
table will be placed in the archive table
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 73
XML

in a single columntrans_detailsof codeLISTING 1: Creating and populating the TRANS table

datatype XMLTYPE:
create table trans
(
create table arch_trans trans_date date,
( trans_id number(10),
trans_type varchar2(1),
arch_date date, trans_amount number(12,2)
trans_date date, )
trans_details xmltype partition by range (trans_date)
(
) partition Jan2003 values less than (to_date(01/02/2003, dd/mm/yyyy)),
partition by range (trans_date) partition Feb2003 values less than (to_date(01/03/2003, dd/mm/yyyy)),

...
(
);
partition Jan2003 values less than (to_
date(01/02/2003, dd/mm/yyyy)), begin
partition Feb2003 values less than (to_ for ctr in 1..100 loop
insert into trans values
date(01/03/2003, dd/mm/yyyy)), (
...

sysdate - dbms_random.value(1,300),
) ctr,
decode (round(dbms_random.value(1,2)),1,C,D),
/ dbms_random.value(1,10000)
);
John notes two important points: end loop;
end;
O
The ARCH_TRANS archive table has /
been partitioned on TRANS_DATE, in
the same way as the TRANS table.
O
Besides the TRANS_DATE column, no codeLISTING 2: Archiving as XML
other column from the original table is 1 insert into arch_trans
in the ARCH_TRANS table. Rather, a 2 (
3 arch_date,
new column called TRANS_DETAILS 4 trans_date,
holds other production table column 5 trans_details
values in XML format. 6 )
7 select
8 sysdate,
ARCHIVING 9 trans_date,
To convert the data from relational 10 xmlelement(TransRec,
11 xmlforest(
to XML format, John uses two 12 trans_id,
SQL functions: XMLFOREST and 13 trans_type,
XMLELEMENT. XMLFOREST converts 14 trans_amount
15 )
the relational data into XML format. 16 )
The column values are converted 17 from trans
into XML data enclosed by tag names
identical to the column names. To codeLISTING 3: Looking at ARCH_TRANS
demonstrate, John selects two columns
SQL> set long 999999999
of the TRANS table, modified by the SQL> select * from ARCH_TRANS;
XMLFOREST function:
ARCH_DATE TRANS_DAT TRANS_DETAILS

select xmlforest(trans_id,trans_type) 07-JAN-06 27-DEC-05 <TransRec>
from trans; <TRANS_ID>80</TRANS_ID>
<TRANS_TYPE>D</TRANS_TYPE>
<TRANS_AMOUNT>4142.68</TRANS_AMOUNT>
XMLFOREST(TRANS_ID,TRANS_TYPE) </TransRec>

<TRANS_ID>1</TRANS_ID><TRANS_
TYPE>D</TRANS_TYPE> a user-defined tag around the records. XMLELEMENT(TRANSREC,XMLFOREST(
<TRANS_ID>2</TRANS_ID><TRANS_ John uses the <TransRec> tag to contain TRANS_ID,TRANS_TYPE))
TYPE>C</TRANS_TYPE> records of the TRANS table:
...

<TransRec><TRANS_ID>1</TRANS_ID>
select xmlelement(TransRec,xmlforest( <TRANS_TYPE>D</TRANS_TYPE>
The XMLELEMENT function places trans_id,trans_type)) from trans; </TransRec>

74 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
<TransRec><TRANS_ID>2</TRANS_ID>
<TRANS_TYPE>C</TRANS_TYPE>
</TransRec>
...
Using these two functions, John
demonstrates the SQL script shown in
Listing 2, for converting the data from
the TRANS table and loading it into the
ARCH_TRANS table.
The columns of TRANS converted to
XML format are stored in the TRANS_
DETAILS column of the ARCH_TRANS
table. After the data is inserted into the
ARCH_TRANS table, John selects from
it, as shown in Listing 3, to show how
the data is stored. Note that John uses
the SET LONG statement to enable the
display of a long list of data (the default
is only 80 characters).
When it is time to archive a particu-
lar partition, John converts that parti-
tion of the ARCH_TRANS table to a
standalone table:
alter table arch_trans
exchange partition jan2003
with table arch_trans_jan2003
/ during archiving.
The ARCH_TRANS_JAN2003 table
is created in the same tablespace as the
JAN2003 partition. John can find the
tablespace name by using this query:
select tablespace_name
from dba_tab_partitions
where table_name = TRANS
and partition_name = JAN2003;
TABLESPACE_NAME
JAN2003
John transports the JAN2003
tablespace in which the ARCH_TRANS_
JAN2003 table resides.
expdp \/ as sysdba\
transport_tablespaces=jan2003
dumpfile=jan2003.dmp
Finally, John drops the exchanged
table (ARCH_TRANS_JAN2003) and
the partition from both the production
codeLISTING 4: Transforming XML to relational format
col Trans_ID format a5
col Trans_Type format a1
col Trans_Amount format 999999.99
select arch_date, trans_date,
extractvalue(trans_details,/TransRec/TRANS_ID) Trans_ID,
extractvalue(trans_details,/TransRec/TRANS_TYPE) Trans_Type,
to_number(extractvalue(trans_details,/TransRec/TRANS_AMOUNT)) Trans_Amount
from arch_trans;
table (TRANS) and the archive table
(ARCH_TRANS).
drop table arch_trans_jan2003;
alter table trans
drop partition jan2003;
alter table arch_trans
drop partition jan2003;
REINSTATEMENT
Johns demonstrations to the Acme
programmers and DBAs of how to
archive the table are well received, but
reinstating the table easily is another
important archiving requirement. To
show this process, John outlines how
to reverse the activities performed
First, he plugs the tablespace back
into the database:
impdp dump_file=jan2003.dmp
transport_datafiles=/u01/jan2003.dbf
This instantly makes the ARCH_
TRANS_JAN2003 table available in
the database. The table can be queried
now, or it can be merged with the main
table (ARCH_TRANS) as a partition and
queried. To merge it back, John issues
Another advantage of XMLType is free search
alter table arch_trans
exchange partition jan2003
with table arch_trans_jan2003
/
Now the ARCH_TRANS table also
contains the data for January 2003.
Reinstatement is complete.
QUERYING THE ARCHIVES
The Acme DBAs and programmers are
still concerned. They remind John that
the data in the ARCH_TRANS table is in
ORACLE MAGAZINE
XMLnot relationalformat.
John writes the query shown in
Listing 4 to transform the XML data
to relational format. The query uses
XPath notation to extract all the
columns from the XML representation
of the data. Acmes applications still
see the archived data as relational, and
they do not need to change. The devel-
opers in attendance seem satisfied with
this solution.
The key element of the query in
More XMLType
You can use XMLType in many other cases.
Consider a scenario in which the attributes
of an entity are not clearly known in advance
and evolve over time. An example might be a
car, whose attributes might be make, model,
trim level, year, and color. Later, for some
specially manufactured cars, you may want
to add other details such as assembly plant
name and engine plant name. If you have
a relational format, you can add columns,
but suddenly you may have to change all
your INSERT statements, even if those new
attributes are not inserted. If the attributes
are stored in XMLType, all you have to do is
to add those new attributes as tags for those
specific records only. The SQL would have to
change only when those specific attributes are
accessed, not otherwise.
of data, using the Context option, in which case
you can create a CTXSYS type of index and
search inside the XMLType data for specific
strings. This technique is very useful when
you dont know which column of the table has
a particular value you are searching for; for
instance, you are searching for the value ARUP
but dont know if thats part of the customers
first name, middle name, last name, street
address, city, county, partners name, or
whatever else. The use of context search will
reveal that value in a record and identify which
tag includes it.
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 75
XML

Listing 4 is the EXTRACTVALUE func- codeLISTING 5: Modifying the archival script to reflect the added column
tion, which extracts the value of an
1 insert into arch_trans
element from the XML document or 2 (
data. John reminds everyone that the 3 arch_date,
4 trans_date,
data in the TRANS_DETAILS column
5 trans_details
includes the XML tags that show the 6 )
nature of the data. For instance, the 7 select
8 sysdate,
data in one record looks like this:
9 trans_date,
10 xmlelement(TransRec,
<TransRec> 11 xmlforest(
12 trans_id,
<TRANS_ID>80</TRANS_ID>
13 trans_type,
<TRANS_TYPE>D</TRANS_TYPE> 14 trans_amount
<TRANS_AMOUNT>4142.68 15 acc_no
16 )
</TRANS_AMOUNT>
17 )
</TransRec> 18 from trans;

To get the value of TRANS_TYPE,

John starts at the highest-level element,
TransRec, and then uses XPath nota-
tion to get to the appropriate level:
extractvalue(trans_details,/TransRec/
TRANS_TYPE)
John notes an important point here:
Unlike SQL, the names in XML are
case-sensitive, so TransRec and transRec
are not the same.
To make the data retrieval faster,
John proposes to create an index on
ARCH_TRANS. Most of the queries
select data based on TRANS_TYPE, so
that is a good candidate for the index.
John creates the index:
create index
in_arch_trans_type
on arch_trans (
extractvalue (
TRANS_DETAILS,
/TransRec/TRANS_TYPE));
This SQL statement may resemble a
function-based index, John explains, but
it actually creates the index based on the
XPath notation.
STRUCTURAL CHANGES
Requirement
Time-based archiving
Minimal impact during purging
of data
Quick and low-overhead restoration
Flexibility for table structural
changes
Ability to search within archived
data
Table 1: Acme archiving requirements and solutions
alter table trans add (acc_no
varchar2(10))
Now the new ACC_NO column is
in the TRANS table, but it is not in the
TRANS_DETAILS column of the ARCH_
TRANS table. The insertion of the data
from the TRANS_DETAILS column into
TRANS will not fail, assures John.
When a new column is added, the
INSERT script needs to be updated
to reflect the existence of the new
column. The new script is shown in
Listing 5. Its identical to Listing 2
except at line 15, where the new ACC_
NO column is selected.
The online version of this article,
at oracle.com/technology/oramag/
Solution
Partitioning of the ARCH_TRANS table in exactly the same way as the
main table, TRANS. This way, a whole partition can be exchanged with a
table and then transported.
The purging means dropping a partition, which has virtually no overhead.
Reinstating the purged data involves plugging the tablespace back into
the database, which has virtually no overhead.
The data is archived in XML format, which removes restrictions on the
table structural changes.
The XML data is shown in a relational format, enabling it to be queried as
such, with the familiar SQL interface.
how they have been addressed by the
proposed solutions, shown in Table 1.
There are no more questions; there are
no more concerns. O
Arup Nanda (arup@proligence.com) has been
an Oracle DBA for more than 12 years, handling
all aspects of database administrationfrom
performance tuning to security and disaster
recovery. He is a coauthor of PL/SQL for DBAs
(OReilly Media, 2005) and was Oracle Magazines
DBA of the Year in 2003.
READ online-only article content
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06-jul/
o46xml.html

Now only one critical requirement is
left: the ability to allow for the pro-
duction tables to change. John shows
an example in which a column called
oracle/06-jul/o46xml.html, concludes the READ more about
discussion of how this XML archiving XML functionality in Oracle
Database 10g
allows the production tables to change. download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/
appdev.102/b14259/toc.htm

ACC_NO is added to the TRANS CONCLUSION SQL functions used in this article
table after data has been archived and In closing, John revisits the original download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/
b14200/toc.htm
removed from the table. archiving requirements and shows

76 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
 t e c h n o l o g y ASK TOM
On Speeding, Dating, and Spelling
Our technologist finds the OS, makes things appear faster, dates clients, and spells out numbers.
once read on your site that someone had
demonstrated how to determine the OS
of the SQL*Plus session; however, I am
now unable to find the information. I have
a SQL script that I use to create a SQL script.
I would like to extend this further, so that if
the original SQL script is called from a UNIX-
based SQL*Plus session, the original SQL script
creates both a SQL script and a shell script.
I think what you are remembering
from the Ask Tom site was how to find
the OS of the server the database is
running on. That would be via DBMS_
UTILITY.PORT_STRING:
SQL> begin
2 dbms_output.put_line(
3 dbms_utility.port_string );
4 end;
5 /
Linuxi386/Linux-2.0.34-8.1.0
That will tell you not which OS
your SQL*Plus client is running on but
rather the OS of the database server
itself, which might be different. There
are two things you can look at, however,
that can be very useful: the PROGRAM
and PROCESS columns in V$SESSION.
The PROGRAM column generally shows
the name of the client program that con-
nects to the database (but this can easily
be spoofed if files are copied to differ-
ent names), and the PROCESS column
shows the process ID of the client con-
necting to the databasethe process
ID from the client machine itself. Both
of these columns will give you a very
good idea of the client OS from which
SQL*Plus is being executed. If you use
the following query
SQL> select program, process
2 from v$session
3 where sid =
4 (select sid
5 from v$mystat
6 where rownum = 1
7 )
8 /
PROGRAM PROCESS
USER command?
sqlplus.exe 704:416
you can see the name of the client
process as well as the client process
IDthe above example was a Windows
SQL*Plus client, as evidenced by the
.exe in the program name as well as
the colon (:) in the process. If I use a
UNIX client to connect to the same
database, I will observe something
similar to the following:
SQL> select program, process
...
8 /
PROGRAM
diate drop user a cascade; );
sqlplus@host(TNS V1-V3)
The .exe is missing from the
program name because UNIX does
not use that extension, and further,
the process ID of the client does not
include the colon as it does for a
Windows client.
See asktom.oracle.com/~tkyte/
DetermineOS.html for the original
online discussion and the evolution of
this answer. Thanks to all of the online
participants for coming up with some
good ideas.
MAKING SOMETHING FAST
We have an application that creates users and
places private synonyms in users accounts.
On occasion a security administrator drops
multiple users who no longer need access to
BY TO M KYTE
the database. It can take about two minutes
to drop a user that contains about a thousand
synonyms. Im getting complaints that it takes
too long to remove the obsolete accounts.
Apart from transitioning the system to using
public synonyms, do you have any suggestions
on improving the performance of the DROP
It is all about perception. Whenever
I have a long-running process, I think
about how I can background it so an
unlucky end user never has to wait for it
to complete. If the end user doesnt have
to wait for it, it will seem instantaneous.
So, move long-running processes
into the background, and the end users
think, Wow, this is really fast! What
I recommend is to turn the process of
DROP USER USERNAME CASCADE
into the following:
1. ALTER USER USERNAME LOCK; (The
account is disabled, so the secure goal
is achieved.)
PROCESS 2. dbms_job.submit( l_job, execute imme-
10227 3. commit;
And give the user a message imme-
diately that says OK. The locking
of the account will achieve the goal
of dropping the user (by removing
access), and the actual dropping of the
user schemawhich might take a bit
of timewill happen shortly after the
COMMIT, in the background, without
making the end user wait. As far as
the end user is concerned, the act of
dropping the user is instantaneous and
the response time is always the same.
Consistency is important to end users.
I do this with lots of apparently slow
thingshide the real work in the back-
ground and let the end users continue,
and they think the application is much
faster than it is.
ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 77
ASK TOM

NLS_DATE_FORMAT ISNT WORKING format=your_format statement in your execute immediate

Why does the NLS_DATE_FORMAT in my application right after the connect alter session
init.ora sometimes not work? I have it set, but O
Use an AFTER LOGON trigger similar set nls_date_format =
the default date format isnt set correctly for the one supplied below your format here ;
my applications. Personally, I prefer the second option. end;
If the client environment sets any of If you have an application that relies on /
the NLS_* parameters, they override the a specific default date format, it should
server in all cases. So if the client sets, explicitly request that format. The SPELLING OUT A NUMBER
for example, the NLS_LANG parameter, reason: If you try to install two applica- I am trying to spell out a number. That is, I
that will cause all NLS_* settings on the tions in the same database and their would like to see the number 123 printed as
server to be ignored. The server will use date formats conflict, you wont be able one hundred twenty-three. Are there any func-
the clients specified values and default to use both applications without setting tions available for me?
values for all other NLS settings instead, the date formats explicitly, which will Believe it or not, there almost is.
ignoring anything in init.ora. prevent consolidation in the future. It is There is a DATE format of Jsp that
Where that typically comes into play best never to have any of your applica- spells a Julian date:
is if the client is Windows. The client tions dependent on certain default init
install on Windows sets the NLS_LANG .ora settingsthis would prevent your SQL> select to_char(sysdate,J),
parameter in the registry by default. The application from behaving nicely with 2 to_char(sysdate,Jsp)
fact that the client sets the NLS_LANG other applications in the same database. 3 from dual;
parameter causes the NLS settings you
put in the init.ora not to be used by that create or replace trigger TO_CHAR
client. To solve this, you can data_logon_trigger
O
Set the NLS_DATE_FORMAT in the after logon TO_CHAR(SYSDATE,JSP)
registry on the client ON DATABASE
O
Put an ALTER SESSION SET nls_date_ begin 2453812
Two Million Four Hundred Fifty-Three
Thousand Eight Hundred Twelve
codeLISTING 1: PL/SQL function for spelling out numbers
create or replace Now, this works fine for many
function spell_number( p_number in number )
return varchar2
numbers, but if you go out of the range
as of Julian dates, you will receive
type myArray is table of varchar2(255);
l_str myArray := myArray( ,
thousand , million ,
ERROR at line 1:
billion , trillion , ORA-01854: julian date must be
quadrillion , quintillion , between 1 and 5373484
sextillion , septillion ,
octillion , nonillion ,
decillion , undecillion , With a little creativity, I can expand
duodecillion ); this to be as large as I need (if 5,373,484
l_num varchar2(50) default trunc( p_number );
is not large enough). The PL/SQL func-
l_return varchar2(4000); tion in Listing 1 demonstrates how you
begin might do this. I encourage you to see
for i in 1 .. l_str.count
loop
asktom.oracle.com/~tkyte/SpellNumber
exit when l_num is null; .html online as well to see the evolution
of this question over time, including
if ( to_number(substr(l_num, length(l_num)-2, 3)) <> 0 )
then
user contributions regarding spelling out
l_return := to_char( numbers in other languages.
to_date(
substr(l_num, length(l_num)-2, 3),
J ),
REPORTING ON DATABASE FREE SPACE
Jsp ) || l_str(i) || l_return; I would like a report in SQL*Plus that shows
end if; the free space by tablespace. Do you have a
l_num := substr( l_num, 1, length(l_num)-3 );
end loop;
working query that provides that?
I doIve had one for a long time.
return l_return; Basically, what I have to do is gener-
end;
/
ate a query that reports free space by
tablespace (aggregating DBA_FREE_

78 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
codeLISTING 2:
set linesize 121
-- free.sql
--
-- This SQL Plus script lists freespace by tablespace
column dummy noprint
column pct_used format
column name format
column Kbytes format
column used format
column free format
column largest format
column max_size format
column pct_max_used format
break on report
compute sum of kbytes on report
compute sum of free on report
compute sum of used on report
select (select decode(extent_management,LOCAL,*, ) ||
decode(segment_space_management,AUTO,a ,m )
from dba_tablespaces where tablespace_name = b.tablespace_name) ||
nvl(b.tablespace_name,
nvl(a.tablespace_name,UNKOWN)) name,
kbytes_alloc kbytes,
kbytes_alloc-nvl(kbytes_free,0) used,
nvl(kbytes_free,0) free,
((kbytes_alloc-nvl(kbytes_free,0))/
kbytes_alloc)*100 pct_used,
nvl(largest,0) largest,
nvl(kbytes_max,kbytes_alloc) Max_Size,
decode( kbytes_max, 0, 0, (kbytes_alloc/kbytes_max)*100) pct_max_used
from ( select sum(bytes)/1024 Kbytes_free,
max(bytes)/1024 largest,
tablespace_name
from sys.dba_free_space
group by tablespace_name ) a,
( select sum(bytes)/1024 Kbytes_alloc,
sum(maxbytes)/1024 Kbytes_max,
tablespace_name
from sys.dba_data_files
group by tablespace_name
union all
select sum(bytes)/1024 Kbytes_alloc,
sum(maxbytes)/1024 Kbytes_max,
tablespace_name
from sys.dba_temp_files
group by tablespace_name )b
where a.tablespace_name (+) = b.tablespace_name
order by 1
/
SPACE to the tablespace level) and join
that to a query that reports the space
allocated to each tablespace (including
temporary tablespaces).
The problem is that DBA_FREE_
SPACE reports space at the extent level
within a tablespace and DBA_DATA_
FILES/DBA_TEMP_FILES reports allo-
cated space by file within a tablespace.
I need to aggregate the data in each
of these views to the tablespace level
before I combine them. Inline views
Reporting free space by tablespace tablespace is a locally managed one,
whereas a leading blank means that it
is an old-fashioned dictionary-managed
tablespace. If the second character is a,
that tells you that the tablespace is using
Automatic Segment Space Management
(ASSM) managed storage, whereas if
the second character is M, that tells you
999.9 heading %|Used
a19 heading Tablespace Name that the tablespace is manually managed
999,999,999 heading Kbytes (pctused, freelists, and so on are used to
999,999,999 heading Used
control space utilization).
999,999,999 heading Free
999,999,999 heading Largest O
Kbytes: Allocated space of the
999,999,999 heading MaxPoss|Kbytes tablespace; the sum of kilobytes con-
999.9 heading %|Max|Used
sumed by all datafiles associated with
the tablespace.
O
Used: Space in the tablespace that is
used by some segment.
O
Free: Space in the tablespace not allo-
cated to any segment.
O
% Used: Ratio of free to allocated space.
O
Largest: The size of the largest contigu-
ous set of blocks available (useful mostly
with dictionary-managed tablespaces).
If this number in a dictionary-managed
tablespace is smaller than the next extent
for some object, that object could fail
with an out of space message, even if
the FREE column says there is lots of
free space.
O
MaxPoss Kbytes: The autoextend
maximum size. (Note: This can be
smaller than the allocated size! You can
set the maximum size to be less than the
current size of a file.)
O
% Max Used: How much of the
maximum autoextend size has been
used so far.
BASE CONVERSIONS
How can I convert a number to some other
base (say base 2 or base 16) and back again?
There are two parts to this answer.
Starting in Oracle8i, the TO_CHAR and
are very useful for doing this, and TO_NUMBER functions can handle con-
Ill make use of them in the query in versions from base 10 (decimal) to base
Listing 2. Additionally, to accommodate 16 (hexadecimal) and back again:
tablespaces that are completely full (and
hence would have no entries in DBA_ SQL> select to_char(123,XX) to_hex,
FREE_SPACE), Ill use an outer join to 2 to_number(7B,XX) from_hex
put the answer together. 3 from dual
The query in Listing 2 supplies the 4 /
following output:
O
Tablespace Name: The name of the TO_ FROM_HEX
tablespace. A leading asterisk (*) in
the tablespace name indicates that the 7B 123
ORACLE MAGAZINE J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 79
ASK TOM

codeLISTING 3: Converting decimals up to base 36 Then I need a corresponding routine

to convert from any given base back into
create or replace function to_base( p_dec in number, p_base in number )
return varchar2 decimal. This is in Listing 4.
is For convenience, I use the small rou-
l_str varchar2(255) default NULL;
tines in Listing 5 to perform the most-
l_num number default p_dec;
l_hex varchar2(50) default 0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ; common conversions.
begin
if ( trunc(p_dec) <> p_dec OR p_dec < 0 ) then
SYSDBA
raise PROGRAM_ERROR;
end if; I need to know how to prevent Microsoft
loop Windows Server2003 users with the oradba
l_str := substr( l_hex, mod(l_num,p_base)+1, 1 ) || l_str;
role from logging into my database without a
l_num := trunc( l_num/p_base );
exit when ( l_num = 0 ); password. When Im logged in as administra-
end loop; tora member of oradbaI can log into
return l_str;
the database AS SYSDBA with any password,
end to_base;
/ even an empty one.
Well, technically, you did use a pass-
word. You logged into the OS, and you
codeLISTING 4: Converting other bases to decimal provided a password then.
create or replace function to_dec AS SYSDBA is extremely power-
( p_str in varchar2,
p_from_base in number default 16 ) return number
ful. It uses OS authentication; it does
is not require database authentication. In
l_num number default 0; fact, it is used to log in before there is
l_hex varchar2(50) default 0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ;
begin
an instance. What you need to do is
if (p_from_base = 16) lock down the accounts that are in this
then group. Remove the users that should
l_num := to_number( p_str, rpad(x,63,x) );
else
not have this excessively strong capabil-
for i in 1 .. length(p_str) loop ity from the oradba group. Users in this
l_num := l_num * p_from_base + instr(l_hex,upper(substr(p_str,i,1)))-1; group are always permitted access to
end loop;
end if;
the database instance AS SYSDBA. O
return l_num;
end to_dec; Tom Kyte has worked for Oracle since 1993. He is a
/
vice president in the Oracle Public Sector group and
the author of Expert Oracle Database Architecture:
codeLISTING 5: Common base conversion routines 9i and 10g Programming Techniques and Solutions
create or replace function to_hex( p_dec in number ) return varchar2 (Apress, 2005) and Effective Oracle by Design (Oracle
is Press, 2003), among others.
begin
return to_char( p_dec, fm||rpad(x,63,x) );
end to_hex;
/
create or replace function to_bin( p_dec in number ) return varchar2
is
begin ASK Tom
return to_base( p_dec, 2 ); Oracle Vice President Tom Kyte answers your most
difficult technology questions. Highlights from that forum
end to_bin;
appear in this column.
/ asktom.oracle.com
create or replace function to_oct( p_dec in number ) return varchar2
is READ more about
begin getting the OS
return to_base( p_dec, 8 ); asktom.oracle.com/~tkyte/DetermineOS.html
end to_oct;
/ spelling out a number
asktom.oracle.com/~tkyte/SpellNumber.html

READ more Tom

Expert Oracle Database Architecture: 9i and 10g
If you need to cover other bases, routine that converts a positive decimal Programming Techniques and Solutions
such as octal (base 8) or binary (base number into any other base up to base amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1590595300/

2), you can accomplish that in PL/SQL 36 (extending the algorithm used to DOWNLOAD Oracle Database 10g
pretty easily; in fact, Ill do the base 16 represent numbers up to base 16). See Express Edition
oracle.com/technology/xe
conversions as well. First, Ill code a Listing 3.

80 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
 t e c h n o l o g y OCP
Managing Certificates
Questions and answers on managing and using certificates and wallets
racle Application Server
Certificate Authority (OCA) and
Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM)
are important components of
Oracle Application Server Public Key
Infrastructure (PKI). You can use OCA
to administer and manage the entire PKI
certificate lifecycle. This lifecycle includes
recording and processing requests for
new certificates; verifying user creden-
tials; and issuing, renewing, or revoking
these certificates.
Security credentials, consisting of
a public/private key pair, a certificate,
and a trusted certificate, are stored in
and accessed through a logical container
called a wallet. OWM facilitates acquir-
ing, using, and storing certificates. It
also provides a graphical user interface
that standardizes the normal operations
performed with or on certificates and
wallets. Using OWM, you can create
certificate requests that can be used to
request certificates from OCA as well as a
trusted third party.
This article focuses on aspects of OCA
and OWM. It presents sample questions
from the Oracle Application Server 10g:
Administration I exam (Exam#1Z1-311).
By successfully completing the Oracle
Application Server 10g: Administration I
exam, you can earn the Oracle Certified
Associate level of certification. Note that
the sample question format has been
adjusted for presentation in this column.
ORACLE APPLICATION SERVER
CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY
A certificate authority (CA) is a trusted
third party that vouches for the public-
key owners identity. Oracle Application
Server Certificate Authority 10g pro-
vides an easy-to-use Web-based admin-
istration interface (Figure 1) and a user
interface (Figure 2).
An OCA administrator can use the
Figure 1: Oracle Application Server Certificate Authority administration interface
administration interface to perform cer-
tificate administration and management.
End users can use the user interface to
request, renew, and revoke certificates.
Note that the term end user here
includes persons and also server enti-
ties that acquire certificates to facilitate
authentication among servers and appli-
cations. Administrators can access the
home page for the administration inter-
face by going to https://<Oracle HTTP
host>:<SSL port>/oca/admin, where
Oracle HTTP host is the host on which
OCA is installed and SSL port is listed
in the $ORACLE_HOME/install/portlist
.ini file. Similarly, end users can access
the home page for the user interface
by going to https://<Oracle HTTP
host>:<SSL port>/oca/user.
Which two statements are correct regard-
ing OCA?
A. OCA can be used for obtaining user
certificates only, not server certificates.
B. OCA is started and stopped by using
the ocactl command-line tool.
C. When you access the OCA admin-
istration interface for the first time,
you must acquire and install your Web
administrator certificate to be able to
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BY A R A D H A N A P U R I
perform administrative tasks.
D. OCA does not support user authenti-
cation on the basis of a preissued secure-
sockets-layer (SSL) certificate.
The correct answers are B and C. For
security reasons, you can start and stop
OCA only by using the ocactl command-
line tool, which requires the administra-
tors password. This tool uses the OCA
configuration file located in $ORACLE_
HOME/oca/conf/oca.xml. You must have
the administrator certificate before you
can use any of the OCA administrative
options and controls in the Web inter-
face. To request the administrator certifi-
cate for your authentication, fill in and
submit a brief form that appears after
OCA is started for the first time. Note
that you must access OCA from the com-
puter you plan to use as the administra-
tor. Answer A is incorrect because users
can use OCA for obtaining User as well
as Server/SubCA certificates (see Figure
2). Answer D is incorrect because OCA
supports user authentication on the basis
of a preissued SSL certificate.
You need to change the OCA administrator
password. You would change it by using
_____.
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 81
OCP
Figure 2: Oracle Application Server Certificate Authority user interface
A. The ocactl command-line tool
B. The OCA administration interface
C. Oracle Application Server Control
D. Oracle Enterprise Security Manager
The correct answer is A. You can use
the ocactl setpasswd -type CA command
to change the OCA administrator pass-
word. OCA must be stopped before you
change the password. Answers B, C, and
D are incorrect because you cannot use
the OCA administration interface, Oracle
Application Server Control, or Oracle
Enterprise Security Manager to change
the OCA administrator password.
Smith is an OCA administrator. He used
computer Comp1 while authenticating
himself as an OCA administrator for the first
time. His Web administrator certificate is
contained in the browser of Comp1. Smith
also needs to perform certification manage-
ment tasks from another computer, Comp2.
What should he do?
A. Stop OCA by using the ocactl utility
on Comp1, and restart OCA on Comp2
by using the ocactl utility.
B. Stop OCA by using the ocactl utility
on Comp1, make changes to the http
.conf file on Comp1, and restart OCA
on Comp2 by using the ocactl utility.
C. Request another administrator certifi-
cate by using Comp2.
D. Export the OCA administrator cer-
tificate from the browser of Comp1,
and copy and import it into the
browser of Comp2.
The correct answer is D. OCA
administrators may want to perform
certificate management tasks from any
82 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
of multiple computers. However, their
Web administrator certificates are con-
tained in the browser of the computer
they used when originally authenticating
themselves as the OCA Web adminis-
trators. To switch from one computer
to another and maintain the ability to
perform certificate management tasks,
you need to export the certificate from
the previous browser and import it into
the new browser. Answers A, B, and
C are incorrect because these actions
do not enable the OCA administrator
to perform administrative tasks from
another computer.
ORACLE WALLET MANAGER
OWM is a standalone Java application
that manages server certificates used
with Oracle Application Server. Wallet
owners use this program to manage and
edit security credentials in their Oracle
wallets. You can use OWM for generat-
ing a public/private key pair and creating
a certificate request for submission to a
CA, for installing a certificate, and for
configuring trusted certificates. You can
also use OWM for creating and opening
a wallet to enable access to PKI-based
services and for uploading a wallet to
or downloading it from a Lightweight
Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) direc-
tory. OWM uses two kinds of certificates:
trusted certificates and user certificates.
Oracle Wallet comes with some common
trusted certificates, and you can also add
some. User certificates are used by end
entitiessuch as an end user, a database,
a client, or a serverto authenticate
themselves. You must install a trusted
certificate from a CA before you can
install a user certificate issued by that
authority.
Which task must you perform before
submitting a Server/SubCA certificate
request to OCA?
A. Create a PKCS#10 request
B. Obtain a user certificate from OCA
by using secure-sockets-layer (SSL)
authentication
C. Obtain a user certificate from OCA by
using single-sign-on (SSO) authentication
D. Obtain read/write permissions on the
$ORACLE_HOME/oca/conf/oca.xml file
The correct answer is A. To get a
Server/SubCA certificate from OCA,
you need to create a PKCS#10 cer-
tificate request by using OWM. After
OWM generates the completed request,
the administrator can save it to the
file system or copy it for pasting into
OCAs Server/SubCA form for request-
ing a certificate from OCA. Answers
B, C, and D are incorrect because
you dont need a user certificate from
OCA or read/write permissions on the
$ORACLE_HOME/oca/conf/oca.xml
file before submitting a Server/SubCA
certificate request to OCA.
CONCLUSION
This column has focused on aspects
of OCA and OWM. OCA completes
the Oracle PKI solution, by providing
a certificate authority and registration
authority combined with an easy-to-use,
comprehensive Web interface. Security
administrators use OWM to manage
public-key security credentials on both
client and server systems. O
Aradhana Puri (ocpexam_ww@oracle.com) is a
principal Oracle certification exam developer at Oracle.
She has been with the company since 2000.
LEARN more about the Oracle
Certification Program, and download
a free exam guide
oracle.com/education/certification
READ Inside OCP columns
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/ocp
 The OAUG brings

like-minded people together

through SIGs and Geos
to determine how to best use

specific Oracle

Applications.
Basheer Khan
Innowave Technology
OAUG Member Since 1996

global users. global solutions.

Special interest groups (SIGs) and geographic user groups (Geos) afford
OAUG members the opportunity to share their knowledge and concerns in
specific areas of interest regarding the growing family of Oracle Applications.
SIGs, Geos, councils and boards combine to give members a direct connection
and the opportunity to work directly with Oracle to provide feedback and
influence product strategy.

+1 404.240.0897 oaug.org

Join Today!
Certified Advantage Partner Index
The partners featured in this index have recently reached or renewed their status of Certified Advantage Partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork.
COMPANY NAME URL COMPANY NAME URL

Global Kolon Data Communication Co., Ltd. www.kdc.kolon.co.kr

Accenture www.accenture.com NCS Pte. Ltd. www.ncs.com.sg
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. www.amd.com Nucleus Software Exports Ltd. www.nucleussoftware.com
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Dell Inc. www.dell.com Systex Information (H.K.) Ltd. www.systex.com.hk
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Fujitsu Group www.fujitsu.com MTS Allstream Inc. www.allstream.com
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HP www.hp.com Europe
IBM/IBM Business Consulting Services www.ibm.com Actebis Peacock GmbH www.actebispeacock.de
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Intec www.intecbilling.com Ares www.ares.fr
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Microsoft www.microsoft.com Atos Origin IT Services UK www.atosorigin.com
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Network Appliance, Inc. www.netapp.com Basilica Computing Limited www.basilica.co.uk
Novell www.novell.com Bechtle Logistik & Service GmbH www.bechtle.com
PegaSystems www.pegasystems.com Borlas IBC www.borlas.ru
Portal www.portal.com CapGemini Telecom Media und Networks GmbH www.de.cgey.com
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Satyam www.satyam.com CIBER UK www.ciber.com
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TechData www.techdata.com CompIT Technologies www.compit-t.com.by
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Unisys www.unisys.com ComputerLand S.A. www.computerland.pl
Wipro www.wipro.com CROC Incorporated www.croc.ru
Africa Consit A/S www.consit.dk
2Cana Solutions (Pty) Ltd www.2cana.co.za Cronos NV www.cronos.be
EOH KPMG Consulting www.eoh.co.za Cronos Ibrica, SA www.cronosiberica.es
Giza Systems Engineering www.gizasystems.com CBOSS www.cboss.ru
Implementation Factory (Pty) Ltd www.ifactory.co.za Deutsche Post ITSolutions GmbH www.dp-itsolutions.de
Integrated Tertiary Software (Pty) Ltd www.its.co.za Developing World Systems Ltd. www.dwsonline.co.uk
New Dawn Technologies www.ndt.co.za DIGORA www.digora.com
Omnidata www.omnidata.co.ma Distrilogie Belgium BVBA www.abcomp.be
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Asia Pacific Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. www.eng.it
ASG (Asia Pacific) Pty Ltd www.asggroup.com.au Explorer (UK) Limited www.explorer.uk.com
Application Hosting Services Co., Ltd. www.a-host.co.th FORS Development Center www.fdc.ru
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Daesang Information Technology Co., Ltd. www.daesangit.com Hunkler GmbH & Co. KG www.hunkler.biz
Digital China (China) Limited www.digtalchina.com.cn I-Teco www.i-teco.ru
DMS Software Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd www.dmsswt.com Industrial and Financial Systems, IFS AB www.ifsworld.com
ECS International Trading (Shanghai) Co., LTD. www.pci.com.cn Infor Global Solutions GmbH www.infor.de
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Huadi Computer Co., Ltd. www.huadi.com.cn KPMG Consulting www.kpmg.be
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. www.huawei.com/cn Kurt Salmon Associates www.kurtsalmon.com
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IT&C Co., Ltd. www.itnc.co.kr Montora www.montora.com
KPMG Consulting Co Ltd www.kpmg.com.tw Morse Group www.morse.com

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Msg Systems ag www.msg-systems.com Procwork CRM www.procwork.com.br

Network Centric Solutions Limited www.ncsltd.com Recours Informatica Consultoria e Assessoria Ltda www.recours.com.br
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OpenPSL www.openpsl.com Soft Bolivar S.A. www.softbolivar.com
Open Technologies www.ot.ru Solusoft de Panama www.solusoft.com
Opitz Consulting GmbH www.opitz-consulting.de Solusoft de Puerto Rico www.solusoft.com
Patech Solutions Limited www.patech-solutions.com Soluciones Casee SOCASEE, S.A. www.socasee.com
PC-Ware Information Technologies AG www.pc-ware.de SQL Technology S.A. www.sqltech.cl
PDV-Systeme Erfurt Gesellschaft fr Systemtechnik mbH www.pdv.de Sunrising Desenvolvimento de Sistemas www.sunrising.com.br
Peak Systems Support Ltd www.peaksystems.uk.com Sygnus S.A. www.sygnus.com.pe
Prodatis Consulting AG www.prodatis.com Synos Consultoria e Informatica www.synos.com.br
Professional Computer Services S.A. www.pcs.gr Sysdesign Consultoria Em Informatica Limitada www.sysdesign.com.br
QAS Ltd www.qas.com Tilsor S.A. www.tilsor.com.uy
TSnet S.A. www.tsnetglobal.com
Quantix Ltd. www.quantix-uk.com
Unimix Tecnologia Ltda www.unimix.com.br
RDTEX www.rdtex.ru
YKP Consultoria e Sistemas Ltda. www.ykp.com.br
RTC Real-Time Center AG www.rtc.ch
Middle East
S.C. RomSoft S.R.L. www.romsoft.info
Bahwan Cybertek LLC www.bahwancybertek.com
SCC PLC www.scc.com
Computer and Communications Systems www.ccs.com.jo
SIV AG www.siv.de
Computer Information Systems www.cis.com.lb
Softman SA www.softman.pl
Computer and Engineering Bureau CEB www.ceb.com.jo
Software Design & Management AG www.sdm.de
Districom www.cis.com.lb
Sopra Group www.sopragroup.com
Emirates Computers Est www.emiratescomputers.co.ae
Sphinx CST www.sphinx.co.uk Global Technology Services LLC www.gtsuae.com
SX3 www.sx3ps.co.uk Hyperlink www.hyperlink-me.com
TEAM GmbH www.team-pb.de International Turnkey Systems (ITS) www.its.ws
Tech Data Midrange GmbH www.tdmidrange.de Intracom Jordan www.intracom.jo
Technology Reply Srl www.reply.it Mannai Trading Company Limited www.mannaicorp.com
Teta SA www.teta.com.pl Mercator www.mercator.co.ae
TietoEnator Corporation www.tetioenator.com Macro Software Systems LLC www.macro-soft.com
TimeStamp www.timestamp.pt Oracle Dedicated Competency Center www. mawarid-odcc.com
TopS Business Integrator www.topsbi.ru Raya Gulf LLC www.rayaholding.com
T-Systems International GmbH www.t-systems.com Royah www.royah.com
Up to Data, Professional Services GMBH www.uptodata.de Satyam Computer Services www.satyam.com
Version 1 Software www.version1.com United States
Vertis BV www.vertis.nl 170 Systems, Inc. www.170systems.com
Whitehouse Consultants Ltd www.whitehouse-consult.com Abaris, Inc. www.abaris-inc.com
WM-data Danmark A/S www.wmdata.com Agilysys www.agilysys.com
Latin America Apex IT, Inc. www.apexit.com
ACT, S.A. www.act.cl Applications Software Technology Corp. www.astcorporation.com
Acao Informatica Brasil Ltda www.acao.com.br BizTech www.biztech.com
Advanced Database & IT Sistemas de Informao S.A. www.advancedit.com.br BMC Software, Inc. www.bmc.com
Asi Consultants www.asiconsutants.com CedarCrestone www.cedarcrestone.com
Aporte Informtica e Tecnologia Limitada www.aporte.inf.br CherryRoad Technologies www.cherryroad.com
Appteck S.A. de C.V. www.appteck.com.mx CIBER www.ciber.com/ces/oracle
Apply Solutions www.applysolutions.com.br CSS International www.cssus.com
Asistir Ltda. www.asistir.com DAZ Systems www.dazsi.com
B2BR Business to Business Informatica do Brasil www.b2br.com.br DLT Solutions, Inc. www.dlt.com
Bertini Consultoria em informatica www.bertini.com.br Dynamic Information Systems www.dynamic-info.com
BGH, S.A. www.bgh.com.ar Hitachi Consulting, Inc. www.hitachiconsulting.com
Hyperion Solutions www.hyperion.com
BusinessMind S.A. www.businessmind.com.ec
Intermec www.intermec.com
Casa de Software S/A www.casasoft.com.br
IT Convergence, Inc. www.itconvergence.com
Coasin Chile, S.A. www.coasin.com
KBACE Technologies, Inc. www.kbace.com
Commit Consultores de Empresas Ltda www.commitconsultores.com.br
Kronos Inc. www.kronos.com
Datastar Argentina S.A. www.datastar.com.ar
Lockheed Martin Systems Integration Owego www.owego.com
Datum, S.A. (Guatemala) www.datum.com.gt
Lucidity Consulting Group LP www.luciditycg.com
Datum, S.A. de C.V. (El Salvador) www.datum.com.sv
MI Services Group, Inc. www.mi-services.com
Discover Technology Informatica Ltda www.discover.com.br
Navitaire Inc. www.navitaire.com
e-Builders & Consulting Group S. A. C. www.ebuilders.com.pe
OSI Consulting, Inc www.osius.com
E-Partner Comercial e Servios de Informtica Ltda www.epartnerbr.com.br Princeton Softech www.princetonsoftech.com
EN-SOF Consultoria e Informtica Ltda. www.en-sof.com.br RCM Technologies www.rcmt.com
Excelsis S.A.C.I.G www.excelsis.com.py Rapidigm, Inc. www.rapidigm.com
Illuminat www.illuminatnm.com Sierra Atlantic, Inc. www.sierraatlantic.com
In Motion Servicios S.A. www.inmotion.cl Sogeti USA LLC www.sogeti.com
Ingenieria Condor S.A. DE C.V. www.i-condor.com Solbourne Computer Inc. www.solbourne.com
J Evans y Asociados S.A.C. www.jevansa.com.pe SYSTIME Computer Corporation www.systime.net
JFM Informtica Ltda. www.jfm.com.br TITAN Technology Partners www.ttpartners.com
Kruger Corporation www.kruger.com.ec TUSC www.tusc.com
MPL Corporate Software SA www.mpl.com.br Vertex Systems, Inc. www.vertexsystems.com
Nexsys de Colombia www.nexsysla.com Waters Corporation www.waters.com
Nexsys del Peru SAC www.nexsysla.com Wave Consulting Group www.wavecg.com
Officer Distribuidora www.officer.com.br Whitbread Technology Partners, Inc. www.whitbreadtech.com
Preteco SA www.preteco.com.ar Xcelicor, Inc. www.xcelicor.com

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 c o m m e n t IN THE FIELD
XML in Databases
XMLs usefulness multiplies with proper handling.
n a world of competing proprietary
data formats, XML is a neutral and
generalized format that is ideal for
data exchange. It is especially suited
for applications employing service-
oriented architectures (SOAs), because
to simplify reuse of program compo-
nents, the individual services need to
send and receive data in general formats.
XML data includes tags that can
describe the data, including its for-
matting and uses. You can also use
built-in security precautions with XML,
including encryption and authentica-
tion features. Plus, the format is exten-
siblethe X in XMLso that you can
define new formats for new data for
new applications.
XML-format data presents both chal-
lenges and opportunities for databases.
The challenges are obvious: A data item
in XML format takes up more room in
storage because you have to accom-
modate all those descriptive tags that
come along for the ride. In addition,
databases may need to perform extra
processing to import and export in
XML format.
The opportunities are more subtle
and available only with databases that
store XML in its native format, such as
the Oracle XML Database. For example,
because each data item has its own
descriptive tag, versioning is possible,
allowing you to examine successive
changes to data. Those tags also make
intricate searches through data possible.
THE BUSINESS PROBLEM
To illustrate when to use XML, con-
sider a project I participated in with a
large financial trading institution300
employees, 5,000 concurrent users,
millions of transactions a day, and
more than US$160 million in revenue.
Before the market opens, incom-
ing data includes premarket orders.
During trading hours, real-time finan-
cial information flows into and out of
the company. Then when the market
closes, the end-of-day processing begins,
including generating reports on the days
trading activity.
The problem? How to share informa-
tion with a diverse audiencepartner
companies and news mediathat used
different applications and information.
The company had been using flat-file
information to provide service to cus-
tomers and partners.
THE SOLUTION
We elected to use XML to send data to
the news media: XMLs data tags pro-
vided the context necessary to define
the enclosed information and served
as useful input for automatic process-
ing to news feeds. We also used XML
to effect company-to-company data
transfer. By contrast, we did not use
XML for financial transactions because
of concerns about both security and
processing speed.
The challenge was to deliver the
XML solution on time and within
budget to provide that better informa-
tion service. We managed to do that,
and as a result, the company can now
communicate with a broader audi-
enceeven though each recipient has
its own applications and formats. The
company sends information out once
in one format and no longer needs to
scramble to match communications
with customers and juggle multiple,
ever-changing formats.
Another example of a corporate
project I contributed to is the popular
Web site of a company with 18,000
employees and more than US$4 billion
in revenue. The site presents product
information to potential customers.
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BY A R I K A P L A N
Manufacturers provide the site with
detailed information on the products
and their features. Local dealers supply
information on which products, with
which features, they have available to
sell. Visitors to the site generate lots of
queries, searching for specific products
or features and comparing all the differ-
ent products.
The site had originally used a pro-
prietary data format that partners had
to adhere to, which limited the sites
growth and partnership opportunities.
Switching to XML allowed the company
to provide information consistently to
a wide range of audiences and applica-
tions. The information flow between
the local dealers and the Web site was
entirely in XML format.
This setup made it simpler for the
many dealersusing a variety of their
own internal applicationsto provide
their information and receive results
and data from the site. As a result, its
now easier to scale up the site for the
partners, who enjoy smoother growth
and thus are better satisfied. The site
data was all stored in the usual tables
in an Oracle database.
XML is not for every use or occa-
sion. But when you need flexibility and
neutrality, it can be ideal. O
Ari Kaplan (ari_kaplan@ioug.org) is president of the
Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) and senior
consultant at Datalink. He founded Expand Beyond
Corporation, a leader in mobile IT software. He has been
involved in Oracle technology since 1992.
READ about Oracle and SOA
oracle.com/soa
VIST XML Technology Center
oracle.com/technology/tech/XML
J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 87
 c o m m e n t ANALYSTS CORNER
Evolving Grid Management
Increased complexity has led to more-intelligent and more-automated system tools.
racle Magazine spoke with Noel
Yuhanna, a senior analyst cov-
ering database technologies at
Forrester Research, about new
trends in enterprise grid management.
Oracle Magazine: How has the IT environ-
ment changed over the past few years,
and what effect has that had on systems?
Yuhanna: The complexity of the IT envi-
ronment has grown significantly, which
has driven the need for better systems
and data management. A decade or two
ago, most companies had homogeneous
computing environments. Now these
environments are more heterogeneous
and complex and contain much more
data, making data management chal-
lenging. You may have 15 or 20 servers
tied together, and you need to be able to
manage availability, performance, scal-
ability, and security in a cohesive way.
We find that 30 percent of failures in
applications and databases are related
to human errors. One single change in
a command line or interaction could
bring down a mission-critical ERP
[enterprise resource planning] applica-
tion. However, automation and better
data management can overcome many of
these errors.
Oracle Magazine: As more systems man-
agement tasks are automated, how
are duties for database administrators
(DBAs) and systems managers evolving?
Yuhanna: DBAs are getting more involved
in managing business data. Thus, they
need to understand how it is used,
managed, and exchanged by applications.
The traditional roles of DBAs, data archi-
tects, and data modelers will converge
somewhat to implement this vision,
especially as data sources and applications
become more virtualized into grid envi-
ronments. At the same time, DBAs will
have less interaction with databases,
as the infrastructure becomes more
88 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
intelligent and better automated by
advanced DBMS technology and system
management tools. For example, the
need for managing performance and
tuning queries will go away because the
database will be able to tune complex
queries itself.
Thanks to intelligent agents and
alerts, IT professionals have more infor-
mation to work with, and they dont
have to go looking for problems. Tools
like Oracle Enterprise Manager give you
a cohesive view, so it is easier to spot
potential problems and stay focused on
the big picture.
Oracle Magazine: IT operations still
consume about 70 percent of most IT
budgets. Is that number going down as
the tools become smarter?
Yuhanna: A decade ago, your average
DBA could manage five to seven data-
bases. Today, thanks to greater intel-
ligence within database management
systems, DBAs can handle 20 databases
or more, which includes production
and nonproduction databases. Thats
because of automation, which lowers
costs, improves operational efficiency,
and adds control. So, yes, we are grad-
ually seeing a shift in the IT budget,
away from routine operations manage-
ment and toward new development
and innovation.
Oracle Magazine: How does Oracle
Enterprise Manager help manage enter-
prise grids?
Yuhanna: Oracle Enterprise Manager is
a powerful database management tool.
Along with Oracle Real Application
Clusters, it helps automate the grid
infrastructure and virtualize the IT
environmentthe applications, servers,
storage, and data. All of these elements
have to come together in a manner that
is more efficient and productive to enter-
prises. Oracle Enterprise Manager helps
BY DAVI D BAUM
you accomplish this while simplifying
the environment and minimizing errors.
It supplies insight into many aspects of
service performance, including applica-
tion servers, firewalls, operating systems,
load balancers, and storage components.
Oracle Magazine: How do these capabili-
ties of Oracle Enterprise Manager differ
from those offered with general-purpose
systems management environments?
Yuhanna: With Oracle Enterprise Manager
10g Release 2, Oracle is reaching out to
the infrastructure at large by connecting
with these existing management tools
as well as with other critical databases.
The difference is that Oracle sees the
database as central to these environ-
ments and has much more knowledge
about database internals. Of course,
90 percent of enterprises dont have
just Oracle; they also have SQL Server,
DB2, Sybase, and other databases. Thats
why Oracle is extending its manage-
ment capabilities through plug-ins and
connectors. That will be a useful step,
because customers want to have a single
solution that unifies a diverse environ-
ment. Oracles continued integration
with other frameworks will be crucial,
especially for grid environments. O
David Baum (david@dbaumcomm.com) is a freelance
business writer based in Santa Barbara, California.
Forrester Research (www.forrester.com) is an
independent technology and market research company
that provides advice about technologys impact on
business and consumers.
READ more about grid computing
oracle.com/technologies/grid
LEARN more about Oracle Enterprise
Manager 10g Release 2
oracle.com/enterprise_manager
Oracle Retail

17 of the Top 20
Retailers in the World
Run Oracle Applications

Get Better Results

Retailers Running Oracle Are
32% More Profitable Than Those Who Dont.

oracle.com/industries/retail
or call 1.800.633.0544
Source: Top retailers are per Fortune Global 500 list. Protability metric reects the average performance of Oracle custom-
ers and non-Oracle customers within the industry group, and is based upon an analysis of nancial data for NYSE and
NASDAQ listed companies that has been validated by Mainstay Partners. Financial data provided by Stratascope Inc.

Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. Oracle, JD Edwards PeopleSoft and Siebel are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.
Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Part # C14988-01