For those of you that have been around Oracle Application Server for some time you will know that the repository or as it may be known Metadata or Infrastructure database  had a number of shortcomings, one of which that you could not install two SOA instances in 10.1. 3 using the same database. Now don’t ask as to why you might do that, it was however considered a requirement at the time, so we did what we could to implement it and no you cannot.  With 11g the Repository Configuration Utility (RCU) which you use to build the repository allows you to have a prefix. I see this as great as I can have a database for all my developers central on suitable hardware and each developer works with their own repository tables. if these screw that up then its only there development that is impacted. There will be a lot of other fine uses, like multiple test domains that we can now host those repositories in a single database. I really love this feature and good on you Oracle for including it. The other thing I like about rcu is that I is only available in Windows or Linux, no that doesn’t mean you can only have your repository on Windows or Linux, it can be in any supported database on whatever platform is  allowed. Its a GUI desktop tool and they are the chosen platforms to run the tool. This will make this tool more robust as there is only two platforms.  The tool is pretty straightforward to use, you only need build a database on a suitable platform and then unzip the download files and run rcu.bat on windows in the bin directory. Follow the prompts and after about 1 to 2 hours depending on hardware you end up with a ready repository

I encountered an issue or a quirk that could do with ironing out. The screen where you can set up credentials for each schema/user that needs to be built and by checking check-boxes. When doing that if I checked 2 check-boxes I could overwrite important information which included the schema name. Perhaps radio buttons might be better there.

Great and

See ya round

Peter

oracle, fusion middleware

The Melbourne conference is over and had a great time. It was great to meet up with some old friends and meet some new ones.  As I have in recent times been doing much more work with Middleware I opted to do a presentation on the first day which went all day with the title of “SOA for DBA’s” presented by Lucas Jellema for Amis in the Netherlands. For anyone who works with Oracle databases and has an interest in working more with SOA I recommend this. If you need to learn a bit of what it is about to help provide better support to the middleware people working with SOA this is a presentation well worth the time. From someone who was  interested I got my moneys worth on this one day of the conference.

After a bit of effort to learn some of the material I will hopefully be able to present some of that to the local Oracle consulting people via the Queensland AUSOUG section.

The next day I was fulfilling my obligation to support the conference by taking up the role of a room monitor for the day. I was provided the opportunity to support Peter Koletzke with his presentation of “A Guide to Fusion Web Development with JDeveloper 11 ” this was another full day session and he provided us with an insight into how far Oracle’s vision of Forms development with Java has come. I enjoyed this presentation as it has further expanded my idea’s of the future of Oracle middleware as a platform. I did not realise how simple it had become to develop applications with 11g. Whilst Java purists might baulk at the idea that I  can create a full working application without writing a line of code, I think it is brilliant. A large part of the application can be done but screen builders, but the stuff I might need a Java expert for would the the sort of stuff any Java expert would want to get there teeth into. This is going to be great for Agile development going forward as in a day I could knock up functioning screens for an application to present to a client for initial review, using the functionality of Jdeveloper 11g as it now stands.

So my summary was is that I had a great conference. I did learn a lot of great new information and will certainly be expanding my skills further into the middleware space as it sure is going to be exciting in the near future as projects come online. It was great to catch up with Connor and Chris and others.

I have a bit of video and some photos to go through to see if there is anything that came out good enough for publishing online of the conference

A patch update came from Jdeveloper 11g came out in the past few days It is probably worth the upgrade as there  is a few glitches in the original release 11g Jdeveloper

See ya round

Peter

The latest release of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala is a dream install, well done guys. I have been using linux since 1995. It was a brutal exercise getting things installed even basics like storage could be a pain and getting an Xserver going was never for the faint of heart. i don’t think I succeeded for some time back them. Time warp forward to today and the ubuntu install was 6 questions, and sit back whilst the installation runs. Now this was onto a VM which limits a a few issues like monitors to choose however the whol process was so straight forward and simple it is probably no longer a tech persons job to install this. I have not tried to install Windows 7 so no comparison is available. I will say for someone wanting to set up a system for people that dont need to be able to run specific Windows application, there is possibly a Linux alternative and there would appear to be little reason to install Windows. This is the sort of desktop product the Linux community has required to place some pressure on Windows as the primary desktop for running applications. I think this could provide computing opportunities for many different places beyond the home user

It may be that in the home of all the computers you only need one with Windows and the rest may be acceptable with Linux using this build of Ubuntu

Well done to the Ubuntu team for a great distribution

Duck over to the Ubuntu site and grab a copy and if you are just interested but not certain then either create a dual boot system a bit more difficult or create a Virtual Machine with free VMWare Server 2.0 which was also a dream to install, but that is for a different article

See ya

Peter

EU says U.S. comment on Oracle, Sun deal unusual | Reuters

The line in this article made me wonder as to what it was that the EU was trying to really protect with this deal. I originally thought it was SAP, as they had an arrangement with MySQL, however I see that they may have closed that arrangement in 2007, cant keep up with all the news. You have to wonder though at the comment “It could be very difficult for a competitor using MySQL codes to sufficiently replace the competitive constraints currently exerted by MySQL in a timely manner,” What competitor are they referring to if its not SAP. What other application companies such that there existence or failure would have ramifications within Europe to suggest that Oracles management, I wont say control of MySQL, would impact a competitor. Does BAAN use MySQL or some other EU application developer with a sufficiently large market share?

But then just as some were not entirely happy with Suns management of MySQL they forked the codebase to do as they wanted. The same will happen under Oracle if Oracle cannot manage the product for the betterment of MySQL and the community. Many will then commence migrating their websites etc to the fork as word extends of Oracles troublesome ways. MySQL will move on and Oracle will be left with a brand and there own version. Don’t forget and old adage, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”. This would seem to be a great example of where Oracle will need to work hard to do just that.

I think it is a load of rubbish and the EU is stalling for an EU company and regardless SAP would seem to be the one with the most to loose.

If I was a shareholder of SUN stock I would be seriously questioning this and whether the damage that it is inflicting on the company warrants a lawsuit.

So EU fess up as to the real motive or step out of the way

See ya round

Peter

There is a lot of information to know and understand about Oracle Security and the internal database features. The security features that i will discuss here are those that are internal to the database and in future articles I will look deeper into some of these articles. Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) is the ability to encrypt data internal in the database so it appears only as encrypted strings to those that don’t have appropriate privileges. The data is encrypted by column so only that information that is truly sensitive such as the credit card number or health care number that could identify a patient is encrypted. The encryption requires the use of the wallet. Ideally it would be kept in a separate file system which increases the level of difficulty of it being recovered along with the database from backups in the event of it being stolen. It need not be as the master key cannot be retrieved without the wallet password. The great feature of Transparent Data Encryption is that it works without altering any application code or features. A few quick changes, you can enable transparent data encryption in around 30 minutes with a few simple changes.

Proxy User is another great feature that is there to allow middle tiers to connect to the database with restricted privileges. This then means that a connection to the database from the middle tier that is compromised in an attack as not so likely to expose the data. The other feature that this brings is that in increases the audit capabilities from a three tier application. This feauter from 10gR2 is available via both thick and thin client. There is credential proxy which requires certificates and Internet Directory to associate the certificate with the LDAP DN for the user. The other feature in this is Application user proxy. Many application servers use a connection pool that is using a single user to connect to the database. This allows application users to be traced within the sessions created with the connection pool Using Internet directory is an additional feature as identification of users can be very clearly defined and privileges are able to be managed from central privilege sets. Another useful feature is the shared schem user that can be configured in the Internet Directory This user is able to be mapped along with any others to a single schema and provided with a role that controls what that user has access to. These would be great for use with tools like Discoverer, where users could be logged into a schema with managed views of data and then through applied privileges have data access restricted.

Other features to discuss are Virtual Private database and Row Level Encryption, then there is Auditing and fine grained auditing to boot, which allows very intense scrutiny of what people are looking at.  When Oracle 10g came out there was additional auditing of the SYSDBA account and Oracle Vault has also been added to the mix. These are all features to protect your data within the database. There are still many external features available to protect communications to the database and protect the data at rest in backups or elsewhere. In wrapping up Oracle has many security features internal to the database that allow the DBA to configure a level of security for the businesses needs to protect important data. I will discuss this in greater details in future articles on security that I have coming up

See ya round

Peter