In his keynote, Larry had several interesting things to say. First, he announced a new product from Oracle. This is, in fact, their first ever hardware product. It is called The Exadata Storage Server. I wonder what Network Appliances (a major sponsor of OpenWorld) thinks of this? The Exadata Storage Server can be standalone or placed in a grid of these things. He also talked about a new connectivity model between the database and the storage server, named InfiniBand. This allows more data, faster, from the disk system to the database.
Hey look, another new product! This one is called The Oracle Database Machine. Good Lord, it has 64 Intel Cores for database processing and 112 cores for storage processing and gigabytes and gigabytes of RAM. And it holds some ridiculous number of Terabytes of data, something like 168.
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While I’m waiting on Larry for his presentation I wanted to recap one of the session from earlier today that I have not got around to posting about yet. Yeah, I’m a slacker. The presentation was an overview of JDeveloper and the Application Development Framework.
The presenter was very good, and he moved very quickly from topic to topic. The points of the presentation were very good, but the demo was better. It was awesome. I’m getting ahead of myself. Oops. I am going to try to sum this up: ADF allows Oracle themselves to utilize developers of various degrees of expertise to quickly and efficiently build useable, robust, efficient applications.
Ok, let’s talk about the demo. That’s why we were all there anyway right?! In just a little under 25 minutes the presenter (Shay? I’m probably spelling that wrong) created a page that paged through data, displayed several master detail scenarios and allowed updating. The whole thing looked nice and worked quickly. A lot of AJAX was built in out of the gate. Graphing was built in. All in all, it was very, very cool.
I have to do some thinking on how this works with ECM. I hope they will soon have prefabricated ADF components to work with the Content Server, or even WCM. How does the Open WCM concept fit into this? How? Why? So many questions, so few answers....
Overwhelmingly I hear people refer to the leader of the Oracle Enterprise by just "Larry". Does he know we're all on a first name basis with him? I wonder what he thinks of that? It's kind of comical, and maybe representative of several social, psychological paradigms. Are we attempting to socially elevate ourselves by referring to a person of power and wealth on a first name basis? Is it something else? I sure don't know. But it did strike me as interesting.
Some of you may have used or even still have an excel spreadsheet which can be used to update metadata. This spreadsheet was originally provided by the former content server creator, Stellent. I am actually unaware of the name or names of the original author or authors and as such have not credited them here. Leave your name to take credit! Some people love it. Some people hate it. Either way, it has been useful to me.
The original style sheet allowed users to specify additional custom columns named after their custom metadata. It offered two buttons. The first was “submit query” which invoked the user defined query string located to the left of the button. The second button “update” would cycle through each of the result records from the query and update the metadata based on the values in the spreadsheet.
I have updated the spreadsheet in two ways. I have added a login button which simply causes a prompt for user credentials. The importance of this button is the reduction in steps needed to update secured content. With the original spreadsheet the user first had to search on public content only and invoke an update which then prompted for credentials after which the user could conduct another search which would then have the credentials to access secured content. With the login button we can now skip this cycle. The second change is a new worksheet which contains configuration variables for the searches. Currently there are three configuration variables including ResultCount, SortField and SortOrder.
Additionally I often get asked how one can use this spreadsheet to update metadata only check-in’s. The trick is an additional column named createPrimaryMetaFile. This column should be set to TRUE if that record represents a metadata only check in.
This file and all updates to it are presented here as-is with no support implied or otherwise. As always, use at your own risk.
References:
remoteMetadataUpdater_20080924.xls (194 KB)
Session-wise, I would like to hit these today:
| Time |
Room |
Description |
| 9:00 AM |
Marriott Golden Gate C1 |
Basics of SOA Deployment for Enterprises |
| 11:30 AM |
Marriott NOB Hill AB |
Using Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle BPEL Process Manager to Integrate and Extend |
| 1:00 PM |
Marriott Salon 5 |
Reshaping Your Business with Web 2.0 |
| 5:00 PM |
Marriott NOB Hill CD |
Optimizing User Engagement, Using Oracle Real-Time Decisions |
In between all of these sessions I am hoping to finally get down to the demo grounds today. The overall goal for the day is to learn as much as possible about SOA Suite.
This session opened with a recap of active content versus historical content. Active content was defined as documents, web content, images, etc. that are being actively developed. Historical content was content that was not accessed, forwarded or replied to in the last thirty days. It was noted that do to various litigation/liability issues historical content needs to be online and discoverable instead of collecting cobwebs on tape in a remote location.
We learned not to forget about the traditional reasons for storage of historical content via an archiving solution such as reduced, consolidated storage and the most common scenario: disaster recovery. These things still exist, but the legality and liability points are much stronger drivers and are immediate, real, substantial threats. Alongside these reasons for needing archiving it is important to note the difference between an online solution versus near-line or offline systems.
The basic idea described was to archive content out of a source system with the OPTION of leaving behind a stub or links and then take the core content and place this into the Universal Online Archive. A tool named High Volume Importer was described for loading content to the system. The system (somewhat because of the underlying requirement of Oracle 11g Database) supports optional compression and de-duplication of content. An example of an 8 core machine was used as a baseline in which they outlined a test case of accomplishing the ingestion of 15 million emails a day.
A set of services were outlined to work with or on top of UOA. The first was the currently shipping Oracle Email Archive Service. In addition a service named File Server Archive Service got some discussion, and it sounded pretty neat. The intention of this service was to archive files from a windows network share or file server. The Oracle Archiving Interface is a set of services that comprise the High Volume Importer and a basic API for developers work with so that you can develop your own services on top of UOA. The coming soon list of services included: Application Archive Service (transactional data, etc.), SharePoint Archive Service, ECM Archive Services (includes non-Oracle solutions such as Documentum), Image Archiving, and finally Desktop Archive Service.
It would appear that ZL Technologies has a death grip on the market for services built upon UOA at this point. It sounds like they have several of these services built out and even a few more. All of their services were noted as being developed against UOA via the Oracle Archiving Interface.
It was unfortunate, but this session seemed more like a long advertisement for partner based services built on top of UOA. This information is important to get out, but there was little discussion UOA itself or any form of deep, let alone middle, dive into UOA itself. Other topics were covered, and overall this was very informative, I just wasn't the right target audience. :)
They did give a really killer example of using this with email archiving though and in the examle the cost of storage of email was reduced by 98%. This seemed to not take into account the COST of buying UOA (oh, and it requires a license of Oracle Enterprise Edition Database), but was neat anyway.
Bob Fraser, a Principal Product Manager for Enterprise 2.0, presented a session named No REST for the Weary: REST APIs and the Activity Stream. This centered around working within WebCenter. Of course, we start off with an overview of what Web/Enterprise 2.0 is. For the 3 people at the conference that don’t know.
Interestingly, this session was less about REST itself and more specifically about where and how it can be used in WebCenter, which was great. He also talked about security with REST/WebCenter so he satisfied that basic need.
A small byproduct of the demo was some discussion of curl, a command line URL invocation application. Available out of the box on most new Mac and Linux systems this application can be handy for automation scenarios and development. It is also available on Windows.
This was really my first look at WebCenter Interaction, a product in the WebCenter Suite. It is neat, but I am again surprised at the level of overlap with other products. Certainly if you wanted get an application with features X, Y and Z you would have several options from within Oracle alone.
References:
cURL
Presentation [PDF] (2.33 MB)
I figured I have seen the Multisite Web Content Management presentation seventy-four times now so I opted instead to go see a session about WebCenter/WebLogic/UCM. Just prior to that we stopped by the Fusion Middleware Lounge to visit with Brian Dirking and see who was out and about already. Then it was off to the session. Official title: Deploying a Web-Oriented Architecture with WebCenter/WebLogic.
A quote about WOA (Web Oriented Architecture) from Dion Hinchcliffe’s Blog:
"In other words, the Web model provides a single, open, and unified information architecture that is consistent, easily consumed, extremely scalable, securable, very reusable, resilient, and highly federated." Wow, that sounds very sales-ish to me.
There was, once again, more advertising about REST. This has been mentioned again and again. Remember, REST is not really a new technology in the sense of age or implementation. It is simply a different way of looking at web services. Make the time to learn about it though, fairly easy once you get into it. Having said that though, I do not know as though I’ve seen anyone implement a REST style call system for Content server…anyone else? Something like:
http://myserver/idc/DOC_INFO/
or
http://myserver/idc/DOC_INFO_BY_NAME/
Would this be useful, would anyone care? Forever and ever Stellent, oh sorry, I meant Fusion ECM Content Server, already had URL based accessibility, though I wouldn’t call it strictly REST.
Anyway, back to the session. They showed a little bit of AquaLogic Ensemble which was used to pull some information off Facebook and then integrated that with a CRM solution. Kind of neat.
There was also a fair amount of discussion about using Dojo JavaScript Library with WebLogic and a thing called Disc, some other framework. They also promoted JSON a little bit. The WebLogic demo was very Web 2.0 oriented demonstrating changing things in real time on the client side of the interaction.
In the end, the demos were somewhat hurried and the message seemed to be more about REST/JSON than about WebLogic. While WebCenter was in the title I do not believe it was ever mentioned again. Maybe that was the brief look at Ensemble in the beginning?
References:
WebCenter
WebLogic Portal
Dojo
Example WebLogic Portal Site
Several sessions look interesting today, especially at 5:00 p.m. Like six of them. Sheesh.
9:00 a.m. Deploying a Web-Oriented Architecture with WebCenter/WebLogic
9:00 a.m. Multisite Web Content Management
11:30 a.m. REST API's with Activity Stream
1:00 p.m. Oracle Ensemble and New Integration Patterns
5:00 p.m. Universal Online Archive
5:00 p.m. Oracle Total Recall Hands-on Lab
What to do, what to do. I have until 9 or so to figure out how to split myself to go to multiple places at the same time. Don't hold your breath.
Brian "Bex" Huff and Andy MacMillan delivered a session called "A Pragmatic Strategy for Oracle ECM" which pushed some of the integration and cooperative concepts that have been pervasive among the keynotes and sessions today. They describe their approach to content management as more realistic than the message presented by many vendors as "Hey, we’ll do it all". Their approach is also more tolerant of your existing content repositories and your investment in those elements.
They describe a situation where a client has several existing content repositories. Some of these can be consolidated into your new strategic content management repository. Some of them cannot. This can be due to technical issues or the fact that you have spent a lot of money on those repositories and/or users are entrenched in using that repository already. These previously existing repositories that perhaps service tremendous load or importance but are not capable or selected as the strategic repository are termed tactical repositories.
The session then moved on to discuss federated software solutions to help control and integrate your existing, tactical repositories with the feature set of your new strategic enterprise wide solution. Examples of these federated software applications included Secure Enterprise Search and Information Rights Management.
Additionally, these two guys are writing a book together, potentially entitled "Transform Infoglut: A Pragmatic Strategy for Oracle Enterprise Content Management" and it will hopefully be delivered sometime around January 2009.
I attended Brian "Bex" Huff's session entitled "Enterprise 2.0: What it is and How You'll Fail". At first attendance was a little sparse, but by 20 minutes in we got more than 15 people in the room. One of the biggest themes of the message was about focus. Focus on Culture versus Technology. This is one of those points that is so foundational to the concept at hand that once you hear you say to yourself, "Well sure, that's obvious", but you wouldn’t normally come up with it on your own.
We also heard an echo from the old Stellent days when he reminded us of the importance of "Getting the right information at the right time to the right people in the right format and context". This reminded me of the big launch of Profiles with 7.5.x Stellent Content Server. It was true/relevant/important then and it still is today.
There were a lot of concepts presented in the presentation and of them all the concept of Social Capital was my favorite. This was somewhat new to me. The concept was not new, but being able to linguistically wrap a name around the subject was a neat discovery. The concept of Social Capital is described on Wikipedia. Basically it can be thought of as referring to the value of the connection between employees and potentially even vendors. People like to work with their friends and so projects get done quicker or more thoroughly.
In the end, I wonder how much push back corporate America will engage in when liability of all this Enterprise 2.0 culture and technology come to bear. While companies may accept it at first, I am concerned about a backlash that comes from committing so much of what would have been hallway conversations, water cooler talk, quick phone calls, etc., into a written, searchable, liable format.
All in all, great talk. It is certainly though provoking.
I attended a session named “Oracle Portal Products (Oracle Portal, Oracle WebCenter Suite, and Products from Stellent and BEA): Which one should I use?” Out of the gate the session tried to define what Web 2.0 is. I kind of felt this went on and on, but I am sure a lot of people found it helpful and it is always good to have a firm base to build the conversation on. Once we got through that the discussion turned to development platform which was a plug for JDeveloper. They also touted REST a lot, which should tickle/torture some of the others in the Blogsphere.
I noticed that the first product of the group they started out featuring was WebCenter. They had a little about Ensemble, but then they jumped directly into a demo of WebCenter. Similar to the demo of Beehive this morning they demonstrated again with WebCenter that IRM is deeply integrated. They also had a really nice demo of using a Mobile device to access and update a list of data in WebCenter.
They talked a little about a Roadmap for the portal products split into features of today, 100 days from now and an 11g 2009 time frame. It looks like full integration between WebLogic, WebCenter and the former AquaLogic frameworks is now slated for the 11g/2009 era. Introductory integrations and rebranding is to occur in the 100 day timespan.
In the end, it kind of looks like WebLogic will be the favored application server foundation and WebCenter will be the favored application written on top of WebLogic. AquaLogic functionality will be rolled into WebCenter. The former Stellent products appear to be a portion of the backend solution for WebCenter/WebLogic. Don’t take this as law, someone will correct me!
Finally, there was some discussion about a Unified Portal Framework, but it seems so far off I am having a hard time coming to grips with it. Maybe that is a better topic for next OpenWorld. Was the question of which one should I use answered? For me it was, WebCenter seems to be the chosen one. They also put in a big plug for Ensemble at the end.
One of the final taglines: "Oracle WebCenter provides Enterprise 2.0 foundation for Oracle Fusion Applications"
The opening keynote is being delivered by Charles Phillips. He discussed Oracle growth in areas such as employees and skill sets as well as the breadth of product line. The big tagline right now is a three word message:
Complete. Open. Integrated.
As the discussion moves on I think web services were mentioned forty-six times. What’s SOA? What’s SOAP? What’s JSON? What’s REST? Don’t know? Better get on that. Integration is key. Do you need to know all these buzzards…erm…I mean buzzwords? Well, you should eventually.
He goes on to describe applications and implementations specifically around the four basic areas of the “Oracle Stack”, starting at the top. Applications, Middleware, Database and then Infrastructure comprise the stack. The first part of this discussion that really got my interest was the release of JDeveloper 11g and WebCenter Suite.
Looks like my previous post may have jumped the gun a little bit on Beehive. Oops. We are now covering an official launch on Beehive. It reminds me of the big launch of Oracle VM at last year’s OpenWorld. I’m still trying to find out whether this is a competitor for Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Groove, or if it is more of something that operates alongside those applications.
Besides the huge room and at least six theatre size screens the first thing I noticed when entering the keynote arena was little plastic wrapped candies advertising Oracle Beehive. I first viewed a demo of the then unreleased Beehive collaboration platform at last year’s OpenWorld. Since then, Beehive has been “released into the wild” and you can use it today.
As the actual keynote was kicked off the messages about Oracle’s commitment to staying “Green” and actually listening to customers was prominently featured. Oracle was set to eliminate the conference guide all together in paper format for a more eco-friendly conference but the customers/clients said they would still like a guide. To straddle the fence Oracle had printed a guide a third the size on recycled paper with recycled ink. I thought this was a pretty cool example of both trying to listen to customer feedback as well as being environment aware.
Some good advice just dropped in the introductions included how to make your conference visit the most comfortable. Tips described included wearing comfortable shoes (check!), lighten your bags (uh oh), and drink lots of water (check!).
Finally, during the introductions they gave out some stats to help you visualize the magnitude of the conference. 45,000 hours of setup, 3,639 staff, 295,000 sq foot of exhibition hall and attendees came from all over the world (133 countries).
I arrived at the airport for leg one of the journey to San Francisco at about 4:30 a.m. Suffering through security and breakfast (avoid airport food if you can) and we finally arrive in Chicago, IL. for the second leg of the journey. We enjoyed three delays as they attempted to install a new windshield on our Boeing 767. I assume they got it all sorted out because we FINALLY left.
Arriving in San Francisco we promptly hailed a cab and hot footed it to the hotel for check-in and then we landed at California Pizza Kitchen for some lunch. With our primary needs now under control the hunt was on for the partner event location.
We attended a few partner sessions and collected some interesting pieces of information. Of course the WebLogic acquisition has yielded a lot of excitement around those products and they seem to be on the forefront of many minds. I also noticed a heavy dependence/integration of BPEL Process Manager with a lot of products. This included what looked like a potential limited use license of BPEL PM with UCM, but I have yet to confirm whether this is true or any of the parameters around this connection. There has been an integration path with BPEL PM around for a while now, but the license ramifications may have changed. More on this later.
The political speakers and the discussion on being “green” and Oracle’s dedication to being eco-friendly certainly passed the time and were entertaining. It again reminds me of the many things I’d like to be into more than I really am. If only there was more time.
Finally, to wrap up I wanted to point out at least two other chaps that are actively reporting on the event. David Roe already has several posts and so does Billy Cripe. David even mentions some embarrassing blogger badge they saddled…I mean presented him with that kind of made me chuckle.
This was my first chance to see Oracle Executive Safra Catz in action and I found her to be very personable. You just never know what large corporate executives are going to be like. Will she be arrogant? Will she be emotionless? She spoke on several occasions, including introducing political advisors James Carville and Mary Matalin. In the end I got to see her and hear her in several forums and overall I was impressed. I'm hoping to be as satisified with presentations by the other Oracle Executive team members! 
Finally starting to think some more about OOW. I'll be there along with the Vice President of Business Development for Midland Information Resources, John Klein. We have little poscards we are handing out and you will be able to find us in various locations if you so desire. Some additional marketing information:
Are you a former Stellent UCM customer?
Have you been through the Stellent to Oracle software migration process?
Are you a new Oracle Fusion ECM customer?
If you answered “yes” to any one of these questions, Midland Information Resources would like to talk to you!
As the most experienced UCM partner in the Oracle channel, we can help you realize and maximize your investment in this technology.
Please stop by and see us at any of the following:
- Oracle Fusion Middleware Lounge – ask for our postcard
- Session: Do You Really Need to Print That Document? – Wednesday, September 24th at 9:00 a.m. at the Yerba Buena Theater
- Unconference – check the board for date/time. We will be discussing Site Studio Customization
See you there!
-Jason
As a result of one of the more recent core updates for oracle content server the actual update screen has several new pieces of data available to help you with the install. I’m not exactly sure when these pieces started showing up in the component update screen but they’re very handy.
There are several ways to execute iDocScript from Java, but in this quick example we will use a PageMerger object. There are several ways to get ahold of a PageMerger object. If you are executing in a context where a service object is readily available you may be able to get a PageMerger object reference with code like this: PageMerger pm = m_service.m_pageMerger;
If that doesn't work for you I would try something like: PageMerger pm = new PageMerger(databinder, executioncontext);
Now that you have your merger object you can execute all kinds of iDocScript code, an example of which might be: pm.evaluateScript("<$lc(\"wwMyString\")$>");
Occasionally, you might have the need to perform what is known as a metadata only check-in. To perform this action you will need a configuration variable known as AllowPrimaryMetaFile. This variable allows users to check in metadata only records. Similarly there is another configuration variable you may want to keep in mind known as AllowAlternateMetaFile. These settings will create check boxes next to the primary and alternate file inputs. This might look like:
These variables should be set to true in the config.cfg file. They can also be set through the admin server in the general configuration. These changes will require a content server restart.
Why would one want to use a metadata only check-in? Often these serve as the records to track things like places or people. Perhaps they can even represent reusable hyperlinks. These data records are then used with tools such as Site Studio in which a designer can create pages and craft the data records into some type of meaningful display.
References
AllowPrimaryMetaFile
AllowAlternateMetaFile
createPrimaryMetaFile
createAlternateMetaFile
Oracle announced an update for the Blogs and Wikis sample components on the quarterly call today. It was also covered along with some additional thoughts on Bex Huff's blog here. Bex has some nice advice that may help when trying to pick between the blog/wiki paradigms supplied by Oracle UCM versus Oracle WebCenter. Unfortunately, many of us will not have the luxury of being able to select from both options which makes this recent update a fantastic announcement. If WebCenter has the better UI and I can store my content in UCM that’s great if I can afford those products.
For those of us that cannot and only have UCM at our disposal the update to these components not only in functionality and UI but also from a support perspective is wonderful.
 
It’s early in the project and you create a nifty Java application to access content server. It executes a few services and generally accomplishes some black wizardry that people “oh” and “ah” over. Everything is going well. You are just about to board the corporate jet for that all expense paid developer retreat in Hawaii when they call you back with a problem.
Customer xyz decided they wanted to use the active directory integration everywhere in the content server and now Nify App does not work. WHAT COULD IT BE? After some truly Sherlock-like investigation work you find out they have switched the Default Authentication mechanism from Basic to NTLM. You quickly dial, “HOLD the plane, I can fix this and still make it!”
Within a minute you have your code open and spot the problem, yes, yes, of course, you will need to set a request property. Your fingers fly across the keys pouring out something akin to these pearls of wisdom: URL url = new URL(URL);
HttpURLConnection urlConn = (HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
urlConn.setRequestProperty ("Cookie", "IntradocAuth=basic");
You casually remark on the way out the door to your stunned co-worker that this enhancement will allow your code to continue connecting with Idc Security, thereby working just fine.
Reality: While the context of this story may be a bit far-fetched the code is not. Thanks Matt Pelham for this tidbit.
In the oracle forums today a question came up about how to add custom actions to the menus in the actions drop downs for the Content Information page (sometimes called the Doc Info page). I wanted to dive into this a little more because in 10gR3 the way the developers crafted the menus is much more extensible. It is very nice. Somebody should get a raise.
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Copyright © 2009 Jason Stortz. All rights reserved.
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