I’m one of those guys

It’s official, I’m one of these guys. I’m excited an honored to join the ranks and look forward to meeting the other Oracle ACE Directors at OpenWorld in November. I’m also looking forward to interfacing with Oracle more closely and continuing my blogging and writing habits as well. There are some truly amazing technologists in … Continue reading “I’m one of those guys”

It’s official, I’m one of these guys. I’m excited an honored to join the ranks and look forward to meeting the other Oracle ACE Directors at OpenWorld in November. I’m also looking forward to interfacing with Oracle more closely and continuing my blogging and writing habits as well. There are some truly amazing technologists in the Oracle ACE Director program–I’m lucky to be among them.

To the other Oracle ACE Directors and 39,000+ other of you, see you in SF in November! πŸ™‚

BTW, for those that are interested, check out my ACE profile.

Oracle Identity Manager Advanced Workshop

I spent the past three days at Oracle’s office in downtown Chicago working on the Oracle Identity Manager Advanced Workshop. Ananth Kini and Sid Choudhury from Oracle did a fine job explaining the product and it’s various use cases to us. Most of the time was allocated to working though extensive and applicable lab exercises … Continue reading “Oracle Identity Manager Advanced Workshop”

I spent the past three days at Oracle’s office in downtown Chicago working on the Oracle Identity Manager Advanced Workshop. Ananth Kini and Sid Choudhury from Oracle did a fine job explaining the product and it’s various use cases to us. Most of the time was allocated to working though extensive and applicable lab exercises where we were guided through tasks like putting new logos on the login page, customizing look and feel, configure prepopulate adapters, configuring and customizing notifications, extending an existing connector (provisioning), and developing, implementing, and testing a complete connector from scratch.

The class was offered to Oracle Partners for free and is the second workshop in the series. The basic workshop happened several months before (I wasn’t able to attend). Unfortunately, I won’t be able to post the contents of the workshop (you have to be a partner to get access to the content). If you’re an Oracle employee, you can download the lab exercises and virtual machines from an internal Oracle website (you’ll have to contact the IdM PM team to find out the site if you don’t already know it).

Overall, what I took away from the class are these thoughts:

  • Almost no one really uses OIM in the “standard” or “out-of-the-box” configuration. Every implementation will require extensive configuration and very likely, some customizations for look and feel.
  • A background in Java development or at least a strong understanding of programming and OO principles will be very helpful when navigating and using the OIM Design Console.
  • The hot deploy feature in OC4J is completely underrated. Our test environment used JBoss (which doesn’t have a hot deployment option), so we frequently had to restart it. Restarting took anywhere from 30-60 seconds to handle initialization.
  • There are plenty of people interested in OIM. Our class was about 13 people. This workshop is being held 3 times in the US (based on the last schedule I saw) and many people came from near and far to attend this session.
  • The OIM product has impressive capabilities, but it takes more work than expected to take advantage of those capabilities. For a non-programmer-type like me, understanding why 3 properties files all contain the same or similar information still doesn’t make sense, but apparently that’s the way many Java deployments are handled when deployed with i18n.
  • Connectors include not just provisioning parts (add, modify,Β  delete), but also reconciliation parts.

If you’re a partner and have a chance to attend this event, I’d recommend it. There’s another one happening in November in Reston, VA. Ask your friendly sales rep about it and they should be able to get you the invitation information. Make sure you and your system meet the prerequisites. The workshop uses VMWare images, so having 2Gb of RAM available will be important.

Another Oracle Certification Exam

Tonight I took another Oracle certification beta exam, Oracle Application Server 10g: Administration II (1Z1-312). Since it was a beta, the fee was only $50 and I knew some of the topics to be covered, so I figured I’d wing it and see how I did. I doubt I passed as I wasn’t well-prepared–especially for … Continue reading “Another Oracle Certification Exam”

Tonight I took another Oracle certification beta exam, Oracle Application Server 10g: Administration II (1Z1-312). Since it was a beta, the fee was only $50 and I knew some of the topics to be covered, so I figured I’d wing it and see how I did. I doubt I passed as I wasn’t well-prepared–especially for the questions related to Application Server Guard and some of the questions on Cold Failover Clusters. We’ll see in a few months if I managed to squeak by it or not (they don’t announce scores for the beta exams for about 10 weeks after the beta period ends). The good part about beta exams is the price, but the bad part is that they have you answer all the questions in the test pool. For this exam, there were over 215 questions in 180 minutes (3 hours). I should know better than to schedule such a span through dinner time, but that was all I could fit in to my schedule this time!

Another reason it was challenging for me was due to a thought that occurred to me as I got about half way through the exam. That is, why are Oracle ACE Directors (for Middleware, Database, or otherwise) not required to have completed some certification. I’ll be the first to agree that having a certification doesn’t necessarily mean you know what you’re talking about. I also know from friends that have already been given the ACE Director honor, the process can be a long one and, at least for them, there were several technical interviews that were required as well. I guess if I were in Oracle’s Certification Program Office, I’d sure like the ACE Directors to take and pass my exams as a sign that the exams were worth taking and that they actually stood for something meaningful. After all, if the ACE Directors are required to take them, it would add at least a little legitimacy to the certification program, wouldn’t it?

I’m not looking to start a flame war or drag the ACE Director program over the coals. I am wondering what others may think of certifications. Note that I’ve already posted my thoughts on certifications, so you’ll see I’m not proposing that certifications be the sole measure of anything. However, they are an interesting tool and provide at least one relatively objective metric as a starting point for evaluating a candidate (for a job or for an elite honorary title like ACE Director).

Let’s see if anyone’s reading…comment away! πŸ™‚

Monday (on a Tuesday) morning finds

I was catching up on my reading this fine Chicagoland morning and found some interesting articles that are definitely worth a short post. First, there’s a strong endorsement for Rich Niemiec’s new book Oracle 10g Performance Tuning Tips and Techniques. I’m still waiting for my copy, but Mary Ann Davidson doesn’t dish out endorsements every … Continue reading “Monday (on a Tuesday) morning finds”

I was catching up on my reading this fine Chicagoland morning and found some interesting articles that are definitely worth a short post.

First, there’s a strong endorsement for Rich Niemiec’s new book Oracle 10g Performance Tuning Tips and Techniques. I’m still waiting for my copy, but Mary Ann Davidson doesn’t dish out endorsements every day, so now I’m getting anxious to dig in.

Next in my “interesting reading” list is the aritcle on integrating reCAPTCHA with Oracle SSO by Paul Gallagher. This posting provides the code necessary to perform all the steps necessary to put a captcha on your Oracle SSO login page. Very cool stuff indeed. Bex Huff indicated in one of the comments that he wouldn’t recommend reCAPTCHA right now because while it is free, it seems to be filling his inbox with a lot of spam. Of course, it’s probably hard to determine if this is due to Bex’s general fame or reCAPTCHA! πŸ™‚

Tanel Poder posted an article about a nice feature in Windows to allow you to color sections in the Windows Command Prompt.Β  It isn’t that hard to implement and could be a great help for those that teach classes or even doing a presentation. It also makes screenshots more meaningful by highlighting the interesting parts of your screen. I’m definitely keeping this posting handy!

Now if I can just keep the days of the week straight this week, I’ll be doing well. I’m working on building the RAC VMs for www.OracleVMs.com and also some other installs for some of the Oracle Identity Management products inside of VMs too. So, watch for more articles about what I’ve learned here over the next week or two.

Oracle 11g dbhome broken…oh, wait, nevermind.

I’ve been doing a lot of testing with Oracle Database 11g lately and I’m a big fan of using oraenv to set the environment. For many releases, it seemed that Oracle had completely ignored oraenv and dbhome, but they’ve made some changes in 11g that aren’t quite so helpful it seems. I’ll probably file an … Continue reading “Oracle 11g dbhome broken…oh, wait, nevermind.”

I’ve been doing a lot of testing with Oracle Database 11g lately and I’m a big fan of using oraenv to set the environment. For many releases, it seemed that Oracle had completely ignored oraenv and dbhome, but they’ve made some changes in 11g that aren’t quite so helpful it seems. I’ll probably file an SR on this stuff soon, but it’s easy to fix.

The issue I encountered was that the dbhome script (which is called by oraenv to determine the ORACLE_HOME for a given ORACLE_SID) failed to return the proper ORACLE_HOME in some cases. After reading dbhome (it’s less than 100 lines long), I realized that the issue was…

Oh, nevermind. I started writing this from memory of one of the beta versions and when I went to check (right where I left off typing in the previous paragraph), I found that the issue had been fixed in the production release. So, apparently that bug did get fixed.

To summarize, the bug in dbhome in beta 5 was particularly interesting since it only came up when the first character in your ORACLE_SID name became a special metacharacter when preceded by a backslash (\). So, everything was going along fine until I created an instance named “rac11g1” and then dbhome failed to work, which also caused in oraenv becoming ineffective. All fixed now, nevermind. Kudos to Oracle for improving the oraenv and dbhome scripts in 11g to now also look for the ORACLE_BASE setting. As many of you have noted or will find out, ORACLE_BASE is becoming increasingly important to Oracle installations.

OpenWorld 2007 News: The Big Party & Session Listings

I wasn’t sure how to top last year’s Elton John show. (By the way, I was also partial to AC/DShe at last year’s show.) However, for my tastes, I think they may have topped it with this year’s lineup. On top of the news about the appreciation event, there’s also news on the session list … Continue reading “OpenWorld 2007 News: The Big Party & Session Listings”

OOW2007 logoI wasn’t sure how to top last year’s Elton John show. (By the way, I was also partial to AC/DShe at last year’s show.) However, for my tastes, I think they may have topped it with this year’s lineup.

On top of the news about the appreciation event, there’s also news on the session list for OOW. I’ve got session S291026 during the regular conference and also two more sessions during IOUG’s Forum program on Sunday as well (these will likely be added to session planner later).

Please do plan to attend the Sunday program. As I’ve been more involved in this year’s Sunday program, I think it will be one of the best yet. I’d love to have a chat about anything related to Oracle Database Identity Management, or SCUBA diving, so let me know if you’re going to be there on Sunday (or post a comment here) and we’ll try to meet up onsite in SF!

I’ll post more on Sunday’s schedule as soon as it is made public.

OpenWorld 07 QuickConnect

Oracle OpenWorld has been on my mind lately as I just got confirmed acceptance of my regular conference session presentation late last week. Today, I created my QuickConnect card. I have seen other posts about this card thingy, but I didn’t realize how interesting it is (or at least it may be) until I got … Continue reading “OpenWorld 07 QuickConnect”

Join Me at Oracle OpenWorld Connect!Oracle OpenWorld has been on my mind lately as I just got confirmed acceptance of my regular conference session presentation late last week. Today, I created my QuickConnect card. I have seen other posts about this card thingy, but I didn’t realize how interesting it is (or at least it may be) until I got to check it out first-hand. My card is to the left. Please feel free to contact me and set up a time to meet! I look forward to seeing you in San Francisco.

Oracle Clusterware & Fencing

I was just catching up on my reading and found an excellent post on Kirk McGowan’s blog discussing Oracle Clusterware’s fencing mechanisms. As Kirk details, there are many theories regarding the effectiveness and safety of Oracle’s fencing approach and he provides his usual no-nonsense responses to those theories. Incase you are lost, a little background … Continue reading “Oracle Clusterware & Fencing”

I was just catching up on my reading and found an excellent post on Kirk McGowan’s blog discussing Oracle Clusterware’s fencing mechanisms. As Kirk details, there are many theories regarding the effectiveness and safety of Oracle’s fencing approach and he provides his usual no-nonsense responses to those theories.

Incase you are lost, a little background may helpful. Fencing (generally speaking) is a mechanism employed by clusterware software to force one or more nodes out of a cluster in the event of a problem. The problems can be, and usually are, serious ones and if fencing algorithms weren’t included, it is likely that most clusters would implode and be very unstable. There are many different approaches to fencing. Some vendors provide I/O fencing which works with the storage to stop any I/O from the node being evicted from the cluster and therefore, prevents corruption to the cluster filesystem and/or database files residing in non-filesystem storage (like ASM or RAW). Oracle performs fencing at the node-level and it uses a modified algorithm known as STONITH (Shoot The Other Node In The Head). As Kirk explains, since there are not easily-accessible APIs to do remote power-off for other cluster nodes, Oracle Clusterware instead uses node suicide where instead of kicking the other node out of the cluster, it removes itself by rebooting. Presumably, when the node restarts, if there is some persistent failure, the node won’t be able to rejoin the cluster and administrator intervention will be required to resolve the problem.

Anyway, Kirk’s treatment of the topic is great and I learned a lot (as I often do when listening to Kirk). Thanks for a great article (and your usual wit) Kirk!

Oracle OpenWorld, IOUG, and New Job (oh my!)

I’ve been MIA for a while as I’ve had a number of events all happening at the same time. They say when it rains, it pours, and the last 2 weeks or so have been pouring! First, I’ve been busy working with the IOUG to help coordinate some sessions for the IOUG Forum event on … Continue reading “Oracle OpenWorld, IOUG, and New Job (oh my!)”

I’ve been MIA for a while as I’ve had a number of events all happening at the same time. They say when it rains, it pours, and the last 2 weeks or so have been pouring!

First, I’ve been busy working with the IOUG to help coordinate some sessions for the IOUG Forum event on Sunday (November 11) at Oracle OpenWorld. I’m going to be involved with two sessions that day, first will be a repeat of the “High Availability Options for Oracle Database” session and the second is a co-presentation with my friend Matt Topper titled “Is That Really You? Prove It!” detailing some of the new features available in the Bharosa product set acquired recently by Oracle. During the regular conference, I’ll be presenting an updated “RAC For Beginners: The Basics” session (not sure when yet).

I’ve also been invited to join the IOUG SIG Council. This is a group within the IOUG that is focused on advancing and developing the various IOUG Special Interest Groups and a great team of people to to work with. Judi Hotspillner and Michelle Malcher lead this group and I’m excited about joining and becoming more active in the IOUG.

Last week, I was also informed that I’ll be one of the three IOUG DBA Track Managers for the Collaborate 08 conference in April 2008. Of course, my work will be long over by the time April rolls around as the track managers are responsible for reviewing and selecting presentations to fill the session slots at the conference. Watch for the call for presentations on the IOUG website in the next few months.

I’ve been busy with transition duties as well since I’m leaving IT Convergence for another opportunity. Don’t worry–I’m still going to be lurking in the usual places and working on Oracle-related things. More about my new gig once I get started there in another week or two. Stay tuned. Obviously, this move and the period leading up to such a decision make for a busy time even when there’s nothing much else going on. So, now that the choice is made, I’m looking forward to writing a bit more often than I have recently (which shouldn’t be too hard!).

Oracle buys Bharosa

I’m completely impressed just by the descriptions of the new tools that Oracle is getting with its Bharosa acquisition. If this stuff does even half of what it is advertising it can do, I’ll be very impressed. If you’re wondering what this is all about, please check out the post on the Talking Identity blog … Continue reading “Oracle buys Bharosa”

I’m completely impressed just by the descriptions of the new tools that Oracle is getting with its Bharosa acquisition. If this stuff does even half of what it is advertising it can do, I’ll be very impressed. If you’re wondering what this is all about, please check out the post on the Talking Identity blog at http://blogs.oracle.com/talkingidentity/2007/07/25#a135. What a great an exciting addition this tool will make to the Suite!

As I learn more, I’ll be continuing to post more information here. For now, it’s on to a vacation day tomorrow!