Feed aggregator

As part of our daily work life – there are many instances where we give compliments / coaching tips to our teams and similarly we receive the same. I see that the “timing” of the feedback plays a key role in the quality of the feedback and the impact it has on the recipient.

In Physics – there is Inverse Square Law which says that the physical quantity or strength is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source. Similarly, I propose an Inverse Feedback Law which says that the quality of feedback is inversely proportional to the time delay in giving the feedback. In simpler words, the longer we delay in giving the feedback, the smaller the impact on the recipient. Yes – that’s the outcome of my engineering brain mixing up with my managerial role

Looking at the role of a Manager, it’s important for him/her to continuously monitor the performance of their team members. For tasks done individually, it will be good for the Manager to quickly review it with the team member and compliment on the work done. If there is a scope for the task to have been done in a better way, the Manager should share it immediately with the team member. If the task has been done through collaboration, the Manager should collect feedback from the involved team members and share it with their team member. If there are tasks done by the Manager – they also should be open to get feedback from their team. Now you can see where this is heading – the feedback process should be a continuous activity – not something that’s done every 6 months or one year. The employee and manager shouldn’t have to go back into memory and think about all the work being done and similarly the 360 feedback reviewers don’t have to go through the same exercise.

As long as the Employee’s work is being tracked through their Goals, we should be able to collect the feedback instantly – I call this “Real time feedback” and Justin also talks about this in his post on performance reviews. Going into the depths of the feedback process – some individuals are very diligent. They give feedback / collect feedback promptly but some people put it off due to work pressure / time constraints. I see that this is where the Goal Management system should step-in and help Employees / Managers to collect feedback. Let’s say that a Goal has been completed and the system should trigger off notifications to people asking for feedback and make it available for review. We also can show the Activities that the individual engaged or contributed to so that we can get a more qualitative feedback. This way – we are having the continuous feedback activity and by the performance review time – most of the grunt work is already done !!

Welcome your comments.

Summer in Idaho is treasured all the more since it is all too brief. We had a long, cold spring - my lilacs were two months behind those of friends and family on the east coast - and some flowers... mary.ann.davidson

So, which number takes more bytes inside an Oracle row?

A: 123

B:  1000000000000000000000000000000000000

And the correct answer is … (drumroll) … B! The “big” number 1000000000000000000000000000000000000 actually takes less space than the “small” 123!

Let’s verify this:

SQL> select vsize(123) A, vsize(1000000000000000000000000000000000000) B from dual;

         A          B
---------- ----------
         3          2

WTF? Why does such a small number 123 take more space than  1000000000000000000000000000000000000 ?

Well, the answer lies in how Oracle stores numbers. Oracle NUMBER datatype doesn’t store numbers in their platform-native integer format. Oracle uses it’s own format which stores numbers in scientific notation, in exponent-mantissa form. More details about this here.

You can use the DUMP sql function to see the actual binary value of the number data stored:

select dump(123) from dual;

DUMP(123)
---------------------
Typ=2 Len=3: 194,2,24

SQL> select dump(1000000000000000000000000000000000000) from dual;

DUMP(10000000000000
-------------------
Typ=2 Len=2: Typ=2 Len=2: 211,2

So, although the number 1000000000000000000000000000000000000 is bigger than 123, when stored in base-10 exponent form, it really carries much less information in it than 123 (1 x 10^36 vs 123 x 10^0). Oracle doesn’t need many bits for keeping the precision of this large value as it happens to be a power of 10.

See what happens when I store a number only slightly bigger or smaller than the original large number, now the stored number requires much more storage for keeping the required precision:

SQL> select dump(1000000000000000000000000000000000000+1) from dual;

DUMP(1000000000000000000000000000000000000+1)
-------------------------------------------------------
Typ=2 Len=20: 211,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2

SQL> select dump(1000000000000000000000000000000000000-1) from dual;

DUMP(1000000000000000000000000000000000000-1)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Typ=2 Len=19: 210,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100

Today I hit an issue upgrading our database from 10.2.0.4 to 11.2.0.1.   The main metalink note which details the steps needed is: Interoperability Notes EBS R12 with Database 11gR2 [ID 1058763.1] Step 22 involves implementing autoconfig in the new database home.  However, when I ran $ORACLE_HOME/appsutil/bin/adconfig.sh it would fail Checking the logfile I found that afdbprf.sh fails with

This is a very simple issue but answer looks quite unrelated to the problem.

I was trying to run an ldif file that will modify certain attribute and objectclass.

I was giving the user details without quotes in ldap_modify command as shown below and it throws Insufficient access error.

[oracle@hostname bin]$ ./ldapmodify -h hostname -p 389 -D cn=orcladmin -W password -f oid_tuning.ldif
modifying entry cn=dsaconfig,cn=configsets,cn=oracle internet directory
ldap_modify: Insufficient access

When I tried with quotes as shown below, it worked like a charm!

[oracle@hostname bin]$ ./ldapmodify -h hostname -p 389 -D “cn=orcladmin” -w password -f oid_tuning.ldif
modifying entry cn=dsaconfig,cn=configsets,cn=oracle internet directory

The error looks like a user lock or access privileges issue, but the answer is quite simple. Anyhow, feel like it would be useful.

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I’m starting to think I’ve made a move into the PC support business, without wanting to or being paid for it…

Over the last couple of weeks my brothers laptop (one of my old ones) has been acting a bit strange. Nothing I could put my finder on, but something was not quite right. Yesterday my “Support Senses” started to tingle when I noticed some files and directories had become read-only for no apparent reason. A meer mortal might have considered trying to diagnose the problem, but this looked like a job for Captain Support. Quicker than a flash Captain Support did a fresh backup of all the photos and documents, then wasted that no good son of a… Dell.

Several hours and many Windows updates later there was a fresh copy of Windows Vista installed. Piece and harmony returned to the world. Captain Support even remembered to configure the VPN connection so his brother could connect to work.

Cheers

Tim…

Captain Support is the ongoing tale of a science nerd who was innocently sequencing sex-incompatibility genes in Brassica oleracea (wild cabbage) when he was spiked by the pins of a radioactive “i386 DX2/66″ chip, transforming him into a PC support superhero.

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The installer of version 1.6.10 (and 1.6.8) of TortoiseSVN has a bug that leads to an incomplete update. You must run the installer a second time and choose the second time the ‘Repair’ option for a proper upgrade. One of the symptoms of an incomplete installation is an exception when trying to compare office files [...]

Oracle Retail provides a full suite of applications that can cover the requirements of the modern retailer. If you visit the Oracle Retail homepage you will be amazed by the variety of the applications that are available.

When a retailer decides to go ahead with Oracle Retail they have to decide which applications they need and what the order of installation will be. The decision for the first question the is entirely up to the retailer. For the second question can be a little bit more complicated. The order in which the various applications will be installed can determine the success or failure of the entire project. There are dependencies between projects and they need to be defined in advance. There are always constraints from the customer side that affect the order of the installation.

According to Oracle Retail the ideal order of installation of the entire Oracle Retail application suite is the following:

1. Oracle Retail Merchandising System (RMS), Oracle Retail Trade Management (RTM), Oracle Retail Sales Audit (ReSA)
2. Oracle Retail Service Layer (RSL)
3. Oracle Retail Extract, Transform, Load (RETL)
4. Oracle Retail Active Retail Intelligence (ARI)
5. Oracle Retail Warehouse Management System (RWMS)
6. Oracle Retail Allocation
7. Oracle Retail Invoice Matching (ReIM)
8. Oracle Retail Price Management (RPM)
9. Oracle Retail Central Office (ORCO)
10. Oracle Retail Back Office (ORBO)
11. Oracle Retail Store Inventory Management (SIM)
12. Oracle Retail Integration Bus (RIB)
13. Oracle Retail Point-of-Service (ORPOS)
14. Oracle Retail Analytics Applications
15. Oracle Retail Advanced Inventory Planning (AIP)
16. Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server (RPAS)
17. Oracle Retail Data Warehouse (RDW)
18. Oracle Retail Workspace (ORW)

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Another question from a colleague - suppose a user receives documents from two or more IRM services - how does the user switch between documents? Does the user need to manually log out of one service and log in to... martin.abrahams

Here’s the list of events where I’ll speak this year:

Michigan OakTable Symposium 2010
Ann Arbor, MI
16-17 September 2010

Considering the concentration of OakTable members there, this will be an awesome event!

I will be delivering my “Back to Basics: Choosing The Entry Point to Performance Troubleshooting Wisely” and “Understanding LGWR, log file sync waits and commit performance” sessions there.

Promo video:
http://www.oaktable.net/media/michigan-oaktable-symposium-2010-promo

Agenda & Registration:
http://michigan.oaktable.net/

Oracle Open Closed World
San Francisco, CA
19-22. September

Note that I won’t be speaking at the official Oracle Open World conference, but I will be speaking at a secret underground event there, about some really fun stuff, like deep internals, hacking, kernel tracing and of course advanced troubleshooting ;-) And rest of the time I’ll be in some bar.

NYOUG Fall 2010 Training Session
Manhattan, NYC, NY
16 November 2010

This is a full day seminar organized by NYOUG. I will be delivering my “Scripts and Tools for Oracle Troubleshooting and Advanced Performance Analysis” session there. It’s an updated version of the material I delivered at the Hotsos Symposium Training Day this year.

Agenda & Registration:
http://www.nyoug.org/upcoming_events.htm#NYOUG_Training_Days

UKOUG Tech & EBS Conference (to be confirmed)
Birmingham, UK
29 November – 1 December 2010

I submitted four papers to UKOUG Tech&EBS conference, so if all goes well, I’ll be there in end of Nov/beginning of Dec too.

http://techandebs.ukoug.org/

Photo by good friend Eddie Awad from Flickr used under Creative Commons

A couple items of note heading into OpenWorld.

Current students can get into JavaOne and Oracle Develop for free.  There are a few qualifications:

You must be enrolled in an accredited nonprofit institutions of learning during the Fall semester/quarter of 2010, taking a minimum of six (6) units, and you must be at least 18 years old.

The free pass gets you:

Admission to any session in the Java Frontier track for students, JavaOne, Oracle Develop and OpenWorld keynotes, three Exhibition Halls and the Mason street tent (more info below). Space permitting, you can also attend any JavaOne and Oracle Develop technical sessions, Birds-of-a-Feather sessions (BOFs), and Hands-on-Lab (HOL) sessions.

Also noteworthy, the location of the OTN Lounge is moving from its place in Moscone West in previous years to the Mason Street tent. Yes, that’s inside the huge tent built *on the street* between Moscone South and Moscone North. Check the photo if you haven’t see it in prior years.

This is likely to be relevant for other reasons (free swag, and ahem, refreshments), but in years past, our little team has hunkered down in the OTN Lounge and used it as a base of operations.

I don’t expect this to change in 2010. So, if you’re looking for us during business hours and it’s not Tuesday the 22nd at 5 PM, a good bet would be to try the OTN Lounge. Or, if you just so happen to be there already, look for us and come say hello.

See you in San Francisco.Possibly Related Posts:

• Interesting OpenWorld Sessions
• OpenWorld 2010 is Coming up Fast
• Bloggers at OpenWorld
• More OpenWorld Sessions of Interest
• OpenWorld Manifest: Days 3 and 4

Having discovered that it’s now easy to create polls, I find that it’s a little addictive.

There have been requests for help going all the way back to 7.3 fairly recently on OTN, so I thought I’d set up a poll to see which versions people had in production. If I’ve got it right you’ll be able to mark multiple choices from the list. 

View This Poll
Market Research

Update from Mumbai 2nd Sept 2010: It’s fascinating that two percent of the current vote (9 / 527) goes to 8.0 or earlier.

Since Oracle acquired BEA, the company is the among the flock of Java Virtual Machine vendors. The JRockit Virtual Machine is touted to be one of the fastest virtual machines. The Authors This book was written by Marcus Hirt and... olaf.heimburger

Contributions by Angela Golla, Infogram Contributor

PeopleSoft Enterprise PeopleTools 8.50 Has Arrived!

Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise PeopleTools 8.50 is now generally available. This new version of PeopleTools is the foundation to the PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.1 applications; however, it is also available to customers running any of the recent PeopleSoft Enterprise applications (8.8, 8.9 and 9.0). Start planning your upgrade now! More information is available at: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/peoplesoft-enterprise/tools-tech/index.html

A listing of Oracle Education classes can be found HERE.

Blog reader was asking, based on one of my latest posts about Oracle WebCenter 11g - Applying Personalization and Customization in Oracle ADF 11g and Oracle WebCenter 11g. While described content was clear, the question itself was about how to include custom ADF Task Flow into WebCenter Composer Catalog and make it available for the user. I will describe this today.

Download sample application - PersonalizationCustomization.zip. It is the same example workspace as it was described in blog post mentioned above.

How we extend default WebCenter Composer Catalog and include custom ADF Task Flows? Let's see, its really not that complex, but you need to know few tricks.

If you are familiar with ADF Libraries, it will be easy. If not, you can read series of posts about this topic - Integration.

We have one ADF Task Flow, will include it into WebCenter Composer Catalog:


ADF Task Flow comes from ADF Library generated based on project - ViewControllerLib:


There is no need to have WebCenter (ViewController) and ADF Library (ViewControllerLib) projects in the same application, I have them together for simplicity. WebCenter Composer is implemented inside ViewController project, this project is configured with WebCenter libraries. Additionally it must have reference to our ADF Library with custom ADF Task Flow:


Next step is to configure WebCenter Composer Catalog, you need to modify default-catalog.xml file located in mds folder available from application root:


Add resource reference, like in my sample application:


You can get correct path for ADF Task Flow resource from JDeveloper resource palette - right click on ADF Task Flow you are interested and select  Show Catalog Reference menu item:


JDeveloper displays ADF Task Flow path (you need to have JDeveloper 11g WebCenter extension installed):


Now, attention please - tricky point ! :) Make sure you don't forget to set security permission for newly added resource - ADF Task Flow. Open ADF Security wizard for WebCenter project and go to Task Flows section:


Make sure you select check-box - Show task flows imported from ADF libraries. Your ADF Task Flow is coming from ADF Library, you will not see it by default. Check-box must be selected to see it:


Set security permission for custom ADF Task Flow:


If you follow all steps, you will get your ADF Task Flow listed in WebCenter Composer Catalog. It can be added to Composer page:

This post covers changes in Oracle Access Manager from 10g (10.1.4.X) to 11g (11.1.1.X).

Oracle Access Manager (OAM) : is Access Management Product acquired from Oblix in 2005. 

• Oblix COREid (6, 7) and OAM 10g is written in C++where as OAM 11g is J2EE application deployed on Oracle WebLogic Server (10.3.3+)
• There are two main OAM components in OAM 10g, Access System(Access Server, WebGate and Policy Manager) and Identity System (Identity Server and WebPass). In OAM 11g there is NO “Identity System Component“. Identity related functions are moved to Oracle Identity Manager(OIM) 11g. (OIM is user provisioning and reconciliation product acquired from Thor Xellerate)
• There is NO identityXML interface or Workflow in OAM 11g.
• Access Server in 10g is now called as OAM Server in 11g
• Policy Manager in 10g is now called as OAM Administration Console in 11g
• AccesssGate and WebGate in 10g are now called as OAM Agents in 11g
• Directory Profiles in 10g are now called as User-Identity Store in 11g
• In OAM 10g configurations are stored in LDAP servers where as in OAM 11g configurations are stored in xml file (under webloigic domain) - $DOMAIN_HOME/config/fmwconfig/oam-config.xml
• In OAM 10g Policies are stored in LDAP server where as in OAM 11g you have option to store them either in XML file or in Database.
• In OAM 10g Sessions used to be stateless where as in OAM 11g, user sessions are stateful and stored on Server in OAM 11g (It is possible to leverage Coherence for distributed caching of session data). For more information on Oracle Coherence (earlier Tangosol) click here
• In OAM 11g (by default) Policy Data & User session datais stored in single database (details under $DOMAIN_HOME/config/jdbc/oam-db-jdbc.xml) under one schema however it is possible to configure OAM Policy Data in to one database and user session data in another database. 
• OAM Server (Access Server in 10g) in OAM 11g is deployed on WebLogic Managed Server (oam_server1 - default port 14100)
• In OAM 11g, OAM Administration Console(Policy Manager in 10g) is deployed on WebLogic Admin Server (default port 7001)
• URL for OAM Administration Console is http://server:7001/oamconsole (default username/password created during domain creation in weblogic)
• OAM 11g User Interface (UI) is based on Application Development Framework (ADF)
• Three type of Web Agents are supported in OAM 11g -
  a) AccessGate/WebGate from 11g
  b) AccessGate/WebGate from 10g (for backward compatibility) and
  c) mod_osso for Oracle 10g Single Sign-On integration  

. 

For step by step installation of Oracle Access Manager (OAM) 11g click here

Previous in series Related Posts for Access Manager

1. Integration Steps - 10g AS with OAM (COREid)
2. OAS - OAM (Access Manager / Oblix COREid) Integration Architecture
3. Oblix COREid and Oracle Identity Management
4. Installing Oracle Access Manager (Oblix COREid / Netpoint)
5. Oracle Access Manager (Oblix COREid) 10.1.4.2 Upgrade
6. Access Manager: WebGate Request Flow
7. Introduction to Oracle Access manager : Identity and Access System - WebPass , Webgate, Policy Manager
8. Certified Directory Server (AD, OID, Tivoli, Novell, Sun or OVD) and their version with Oracle Access Manager
9. Install Oracle Access Manager (OAM) 10.1.4.3 Identity Server, WebPass, Policy Manager, Access Server, WebGate
10. Multi-Language or multi-lingual Support/Documentation for Oracle Access Manager (OAM)
11. OAM Policy Manager Setup Issue “Error in setting Policy Domain Root” : OAM with AD and Dynamic Auxiliary Class
12. OAM 10.1.4.3 Installation Part II - Indentity Server Installation
13. OAMCFGTOOL : OAM Configuration Tool for Fusion Middleware 11g (SOA/WebCenter) Integration with OAM
14. Oracle Access Manager Installation Part III : Install WebPass
15. OAM : Access Server Service Missing when installing Access Manager with ADSI for AD on Windows
16. OAM : Create User Identity - You do not have sufficient rights : Create User Workflow
17. Password Policy in Oracle Access Manager #OAM
18. Changes in Oracle Access Manager 11g R1 (11.1.1.3)

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Listen to Jeff Robbins giving an overview of PeopleTools 8.51 through this recorded advisor webcast. According to Jeff Robbins we can expect release 8.51 in Q3 this year and 8.52 in Q3 next year, keeping in mind the Oracle safe harbor statement. Click here for the webcast Related posts:Release PeopleSoft 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.50, soon? [...] Related posts:

1. Release PeopleSoft 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.50, soon?
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