Weekend Learning: Oracle Linux - Information Center

Are you running an Oracle installation on the Oracle Linux platform?  Did you know there is an Information Center for that?  Bookmark MOS article "Information Center: Oracle Linux" from note ID 1381248.2 to stay on top of issues and knowledge related to Oracle Linux with recent articles such as:

Mitigating the SSLv3 “POODLE” Vulnerability in Oracle Linux (CVE-2014-3566) - Note ID 1940202.1
Oracle Linux 6.6 Release Notes - Note ID 1937716.1
Unable to Run X Applications Through SSH - Note ID 1938170.1

POODLE vulnerability and Oracle products

By now you have likely heard about the POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption) vulnerability issue facing SSL v3.0 communications, but do you know how to find out if your Oracle applications have patches released?  Follow this link to the OTN document which is keeping track of what is affected with patches available, likely vulnerable without fixes available, products not affected and those that are still being researched.  Did you know that this is so important Visa's Cybersource credit card processing platform is disabling SSL v3.0 next week to prevent malicious activities?

As a bonus, check out the article on OTN for disabling SSL v3.0 in the Oracle JDK and JRE platforms!

Cursor sharing and RMAN errors on 11.2.0.2

Tonight I learned that if you have the gv$parameter cursor_sharing set to FORCE or SIMILAR on an 11.2.0.2 platform RMAN may spit out some odd ORA-01008 or ORA-07445 error messages.  My Oracle Support article "ORA-01008: RMAN backup fails with Assorted Errors on 11.2.0.2 if cursor sharing is enabled" via note ID 1472116.1 has all the details including the patch you need to apply in order to avoid "resolving" this by flushing the shared pool all the time.

Hyperion, SmartView, Excel & HsAddin

Ever have users report the following error message in Excel while using SmartView?

Run-time error '53':

File not found: HsAddin

Me neither!  Luckily, I went to the trusty My Oracle Support portal and found several notes which looked to be of assistance:

Connecting to Essbase Through Smart View in Excel 2007 Crashes Excel- Note ID 824533.1
SmartView Shows as Custom Toolbar Instead of Hyperion Menu - Note ID 814257.1
Smart View Error "Run-Time Error ''53'': File not Found: HsAddin" when You Click the SmartView Toolbar - Note ID 875795.1

We followed the directions in the last note, but even though we did not see SmartView in the list of disabled items, HsAddin.dll was there in the list and after being Enabled the end user was able to refresh SmartView again without issue!

Signal 17 and RHEL upgrades

This weekend we upgraded servers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.11 but found quite a surprise when the DBA ran a simple ps command and received the following error message:

Signal 17 (CHLD) caught by ps (procps version 3.2.8).

What did we find out by searching the Interwebs in the middle of the night?  A KB article from Red Hat (subscription required) that told us that the error is confirmed on version 6.6 and has a few simple solutions.  Luckily our system administrators were able to implement one of them in order to return the ps command back to service!

Weekend Learning: Ways to instrument code

Have you ever had a situation where you wished code was instrumented?  Maybe a situation where you had no idea what the error was for a report when it crashed or what table/data was behind the error?  How about needing to get progress information into gv$session_longops?  Well Tim Hall of oracle-base.com fame wants you to instrument your code!  His article even has a few suggestions on how you can accomplish this feat, and I'll tell you that being in Support it is really critical that we plan to have as much information at hand at all times since when we have that .01% chance of encountering an issue we have the same amount of information as the 99.9% when it works right.

Weekend Learning: Oracle DB Information Centers on Security and Installation

As a follow up to my post about the main Information Center for Oracle database products, today I introduce you to several other My Oracle Support articles which may interest you as well:

Information Center: Overview of Database Security Products - Note ID 1548952.2
Information Center: Overview Database Server/Client Installation and Upgrade/Migration - Note ID 1351022.2

Weekend Learning: How software quality can degrade

The best thing about knowledge, is that it never gets old.  Take Cary Millsap's article from a few years about how software quality can be degraded due to the organizational model your company has!  On the surface it is obviously a great article, but the sharing of his ideas stimulated a really great discussion in the comments section as well.  Can we always try to find ways to enhance our processes so we maximize quality and support?  Of course!  Read Cary's article to see if there are some ways you can change processes in order to give your customers a best in-class type of experience.

EBS R12 Security Issue: FND_LOG_MESSAGES

Were you aware that when you upgrade to E-Business Suite R12 one of the changes introduces a very serious security issue?  Read this note from CERT to find out what happened to the FND_LOG_MESSAGES table with the upgrade to R12 and why it is the root cause for the issue I shared at the beginning of the year about the volume growth for FND_LOG_MESSAGES!

Deep Thoughts: Digital Disruption

Recently I read a great article titled "Disrupt or Be Disrupted - Digitally Speaking" and it left me thinking about how I could see digital disruptions not only from/for external customers but our internal customers at work as well.  How often do you think about changes at work, or changes in technology, and want to embrace something that will make your life easier or provide a better service in some way?  Of course this is directed towards executives or masters of digital domains, but we can adapt some of these lessons at a lower level to think differently in our current roles.

Make sure you click through to Accenture's PDF that is also chuck full of information about what the different terms are, percentage of companies that are embracing this in varied ways, and questions that you need to ask yourself about how much of a digital disruptor you believe yourself to be.  The article from the Altimeter Group isn't too shabby either!

R12.1.3: Unable to print A/R Invoices with BPA after patching

After reading My Oracle Support note "Bill Presentment Architecture (BPA) Issue: Unable to Print AR Invoices using BPA Transaction Print - The Print Program Does Not Produce Any PDF Output - File Size = 0" via note 1933710.1 I learned that BPA can have an issue after applying an Oracle patch related to a different issue!  While it appears a template can be changed from xslfo to XSL-FO the change actually needs to take place in the Oracle provided code so instead of being a setup change it requires another Oracle patch to be deployed.

Frits Hoogland: DB parameters from spfile

I've mentioned a few of Frits' articles before, and while this one may be a little out in left field for somebody in a Support role that never really gets to deal with pfile/spfile or even ASM, I think it is a good exercise to follow along with!  Frits has a shortcut to use ASM to get the information out of a spfile using the strings command, but as you will see shortly something is not 100% correct so he goes digging into the guts of how Oracle is working with the spfile to come up with a very interesting (and probably right) hypothesis.

Weekend Learning: Oracle Data as a Service

Last year I posted a nice article I found about DaaS (Data as a Service), but did you know that Oracle now has their own DaaS product?  It was news to me too!  This post from the Oracle Cloud Solutions site lead me over to the Oracle Data as a Service for Business and Oracle Data as a Service for Marketing data sheets but I thought the highlight was the mention of Oracle's BlueKai product which sounds like a centralized source to allow your customers to opt-out from multiple platforms/campaigns with a single touch point.

Weekend Learning: Solaris Zones

Ever wonder about virtualization or VM emulation?  How about hardware partitioning on a server?  If you answered yes to either of these questions, check out this article from the Oracle Systems Blog Austria about the 10 best features of Solaris Zones!

Network monitoring tool: iperf

Looking to add to your toolbox of commands and measurements for your network?  Then this article is for you!  Learn how to use this open source command to measure either client or server connectivity but also look at the comments section, as at least one person seems to have found a strange behavior which you may be able to replicate as well.

How do you find EBS patches?

This sounds like a simple question, but Chris Warticki links us to a great resource on My Oracle Support that really ties together the subject of EBS patching.  It has all the EBS patches, ATG patches, Support Policies, CPUs, and some other valuable documentation which make this one MOS note you cannot miss bookmarking!  Not following Chris' blog or Twitter account?  Now is the time to change that!

Oracle: Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance

Were you able to catch up with Larry Ellison's keynote speeches during Oracle OpenWorld?  Did you see the announcement of Oracle’s Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance?  Do you think your backup strategy could use a refresher?  Maybe you want to suggest to your business how their data can be a lot more secure in the event of a disaster?  Check out the infographic, datasheet, and white paper to get up to speed for the future of data backups!

Converting cron jobs to EM jobs

Have you ever been frustrated with how little configuration there is for cron/crontab jobs?  Well boy are you in luck!  Check out this article from Oracle's Enterprise Manager blog for a great how-to guide for converting your old cron jobs from simple lines in the crontab to complex entries in the EM Job Activities.  This is particularly useful for getting cron jobs to throw out alerts when something is going wrong, and helps take you to the next level of supporting your applications.

Jeff Smith on blogging & my thoughts

Do you blog?  Are you thinking of blogging?  Do you like THAT Jeff Smith and his Oracle SQL Developer tool?  If you answered yes to any of these, I would check out Jeff's LinkedIn post about what he learned by blogging for 30 days in a row.  I am not sure how many days in a row I have blogged now, I am trying for an entire year without missing a day, but I would add these to his bulleted list:

Blogging consistently makes you learn consistently.  Ever get that question about what you would tell your self years ago if you could travel through time?  I would give my younger self the advice to start blogging from my first moment on the job not only because of the opportunities like presenting that might come, or being more involved in the Oracle community, but because it would force me to get engaged and learn each and every day.

The more technical your content, the more hits you get.  I thought I had a lot of hits when I went to Hotsos in March since I finally broke the 2000 hits/month milestone, but the past 2 months have seen me hit well over 3500 hits/month due to the more technical content I have shared which was full of error messages and 12c specific information.  This month?  A lot less technical content/keywords which can be picked up by search engines so my metrics are trending for less than 3000 hits/month for October.

You need to understand what your social input bandwidth threshold is.  That is a lot of words for "do not get overwhelmed by all the stuff out there" because once you have a blog list, it will grow.  When you get on LinkedIn, your network will grow.  If you start Tweeting, you will have a lot of followers/followees/content to dig through.  Quickly, you can get overrun by input and start turning a deaf ear towards them in order to "get control".

Decide if you want to use images to enhance or show what you are talking about.  There are a lot of great blogs out there that use images to teach or reference and that is fantastic for what they are doing, or they regularly have images which really make me think of them as more professional than the pure text posts I do on a regular basis.

Do not depend on a single source for content.  If you have been visiting the blog for a while you will probably have noticed that right now I am really picking on a particular source for a lot of content right now.  That is probably related to my third point tonight, as there are just SO many inputs out there it is easy to target in on one source and keep riding it until you (or your audience) get bored with it.  I am going to try and break that trend over the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

So from Jeff's list, I would say I have followed #1, #3, #5, #6 (since Google does not charge), and #8 with this post.  :}

Weekend Learning: A/P Period Close Advisor

Are you looking for ways to make your A/P Close faster?  Look no further than Oracle's Period Close Advisor which has a great overview here or you can find the Advisor in MOS via document ID 335.1 "Period Close Advisor: E-Business Suite (EBS)."  You have to deal with this a dozen times a year, so you might as well check this out to save you time each Close!

Weekend Learning: R12: Solaris on SPARC OS updates required

Do you run EBS R12 with the Oracle Solaris OS on a SPARC platform?  If so, do you know about changes coming in December requiring you to be above a specific release of Solaris in order to continue receiving EBS patches?  True story!!  Check out the My Oracle Support note "New Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Operating System and Tools Requirements for the Oracle Solaris on SPARC platform" via document 1912669.1 for all of the details!

RMOUG 2015: Presenting!

Last month I let you know about the RMOUG abstracts being open and today I received news that I was accepted to speak there as my first event of 2015!  You can check out the presentations that will be at the event and after that visit the registration page to sign up now to save over $100 on early bird pricing.  Where else can you get two and a half days of premium Oracle technical content for less than $600, and if you sign up now it's just over $400 for a real steal!

I hope to see you there in February!

R12.1.3: Patches for AME Approval Sequencing issues

Were you aware that there are so many issues surrounding AME Approval Sequencing that there are several different patches which need to be applied?  Article "Oracle Patches Guide - Release 12.1.3 - Approval Sequencing - Action History Display Issues With and Without AME" via MOS note ID 1598819.1 has all of the patches listed and if they are included in previous rollup patches but most have not been added so many one-off patches will need to be downloaded!

Jonathan Lewis: Execution Plans

Are you interested in learning more about how the Optimizer works, how to walk through execution plans, or even how to generate your own plans?  Look no further than Jonathan Lewis's excellent series on execution plans courtesy of redgate and AllThingsOracle!  So far there are 10 posts, and you will probably learn something from each and every post of his!

R12: Invoices Entry not displaying correct tax

In MOS articles that have titles which say it all "R12: Invoices Entry form (APXINWKB): Tax Amount in General tab does not display inclusive tax for a non-validated invoice" from note ID 1615808.1 really takes the cake.  Of course the article does have step by step instructions for how to replicate the issue and what patches are needed for EBS 12.0 or 12.1 code lines so you need to check this out to make sure your business will not be affected by this problem!

Oracle OpenWorld: Review

Did you enjoy OpenWorld?  Did you get to hit every session you wanted?  Did you not get to go this year?  You are all in luck tonight because I bring you a round up of OpenWorld!  Want to find people that were there attending or that were presenting?  Hit up the #OOW14 stream on Twitter!  Speaking of Twitter, are you following @oracleopenworld?  Did you get to see all the keynotes?  What about the presentations which are already available online?  Have you signed up to make sure you are notified when the Call for Proposals opens next year?

Weekend Learning: Oracle Database - Information Centers

Do you enjoy finding new Information Center documents on My Oracle Support?  If so, tonight is your night!  I introduce not just a single Information Center, but a bevy of them if you follow article "Index of Oracle Database Information Centers" via document ID 1568043.2!  This document has many different facets about Oracle's flagship database product in addition to many different things like Engineered Systems such as Exadata, Exalytics, Exalogic, Big Data, and SPARC plus Embedded Database systems like TimesTen or NoSQL!  Looking for GoldenGate, Audit Vault, or MySQL?  You are in luck!  Documents for these are found here too!

Weekend Learning: Troubleshooting Essbase Agent when hanging

Did you know there are some step by step instructions for how to troubleshoot the Essbase Agent when it is hanging?  The note "Troubleshooting Essbase Agent Hangs on UNIX Systems" on My Oracle Support via document ID 1107095.1 gives you the steps using the pstack and netstat commands!  On top of it all, they give you the other information needed to open an SR when you encounter this issue which may clue you in on the application log files you need to be monitoring in the future.

Weekend Learning: Oracle iProcurement - Information Center

Tonight is your chance to learn more about Oracle Procurement by visiting the My Oracle Support note "Information Center: Oracle iProcurement" from document ID 1381102.2!  Bookmark this for an analyzer tool for Procurement items and the latest patch updates all on top of the usual knowledge, troubleshooting and problem solving notes we find in these Product Information Centers!

ASM connections fail with ORA-01031 if LDAP enabled in OS

While I do not need to connect to an ASM instance, it is interesting to see a lesson that can be applied otherwise to a future problem or project.  If you read article "Connections to the ASM Instance Fail With ORA-01031 When LDAP Is Enabled at OS Level" from document ID 1927489.1 on My Oracle Support you will see there is a very basic lesson to learn about LDAP and how it needs to be setup for RAC High Availability.

R12: Account Analysis Report performance issue

A few months ago I shared a post about the Invoice Workbench slowing down due to XLA data volume and it appears that is not the only way XLA bloat negatively affects your system.  Per My Oracle Support article "R12 Account Analysis Report (XLAAARPT) Performance Problem" with note ID 1667405.1 it appears that with the amount of data here you need to change how the report runs by modifying the indexes a bit.