JDev/ADF 11g goes into production!
14 Oct 2008 by Simon Haslam (in ADF)
With what is probably the most important advancement of Oracle's flagship development tool since their rewrite of JDev 3.2 to create JDev 9i, the production version of JDeveloper 11g (and ADF) is now available.
| This version includes numerous significant new features - a rich client (AJAX) user interface for web apps, task flows, templates, an improved IDE layout, etc. Most notably JDeveloper 11g is running the WebLogic Server 10g R3 for its Java test environment. JDeveloper also uses the WebLogic installer, rather than being just an unzip, which has both command line and graphical versions... |  |
OOW2008 announcements for OFM administrators
27 Sep 2008 by Simon Haslam (in Events)
Perhaps not surprisingly following the big excitement around the BEA acquisition this year, as far as I could see there weren't really any significant announcements within the middleware area at OOW 2008 this week.
The most interesting one for me is that ADF 11g (and JDeveloper 11g) is going production (it's not on OTN yet but expect to see it over the coming days). ADF 11 has some very significant improvements including task flows, templates and the new AJAX-style Rich Client front-end, and it's great to hear it's finally going live.
| One thing that was confusing at first glance was the launch of Oracle Beehive.
For anyone who has been following the Oracle's integration strategy for
BEA, Beehive is an ex-BEA product used for building java applications
(now Apache Beehive) and is in the non-strategic end-of-life category. However the new Oracle Beehive is the successor to Oracle Collaboration Suite and provides email, calendars, shared workspaces, web conferencing etc. |  |
Oracle Fusion Middleware: what's in a name?
28 Aug 2008 by Simon Haslam (in General)
<middleware trivia ahead!>Have you noticed the abbreviation "OFM" being used for Oracle Fusion Middleware recently? I keep seeing it on Oracle's post-BEA merger slides etc so I assume it is now company policy.
[Read More]VMware launches free version of ESX3i
09 Aug 2008 by Simon Haslam (in Virtualization)
Just when the Xen-based virtualization products (like OracleVM) seem to be gaining ground, VMware recently made an interesting move by announcing a free version of ESXi (see VMware ESXi page).
For readers not too familiar with x86 virtualisation, products like VMware Server and Microsoft Virtual PC sit on top of an operating system, whereas ESX and Xen runs directly on the hardware (so called "bare metal" hypervisors). The latter approach has the benefit of offering near-native performance, improved security and better management.
Last year VMware launched ESXi, a "stripped down" version of their hypervisor. This has comparable performance to ESX but has a minimal service console (you manage it remotely) and is small enough to fit in flash memory. This has allowed manufacturers to offer disk-less servers that just boot into ESXi from an internal USB memory stick (e.g. see HP integrated hypervisor paper) which I think has many advantages (but more about my ideal clustered hardware another day!).
Now, if you're reading this blog, the chances are that you're an Oracle App Server/Fusion Middleware administrator, and are probably wondering why you should care about this systems admin stuff! Well, there are several reasons:
[Read More]Oracle WebLogic Server 10g R3 - TP origin
21 Jul 2008 by Simon Haslam (in Java) | Comments (1)
As I mentioned in my last post, one of the mentions in Thomas Kurian's webcast was that there was going to be a 10g R3 release of Oracle (BEA) WebLogic Server. I'd assumed this was just going to be a quick Oracle re-badge of 10.2 whereas I've found out it will be the 10.3 release which is in Technical Preview (see BEA WLS 10.3 TP Highlights).
Whether the new Oracle WebLogic Server will officially be named version 10.1.3 (which would make it sound older than WLS 10.2) or version 10.3 (which would make it sound newer than OAS 10.1.3) remains to be seen, but at least there's a "3" for 10g R3 in there!
The TP was launched at the end of last year and BEA were talking about a production version being available in "mid-2008" so I expect (without any inside information on this) we'll see this release fairly soon.
Oracle-BEA middleware strategy announcement
01 Jul 2008 by Simon Haslam (in General) | Comments (2)
Today Oracle's President, Charles Philips, and Senior Vice-President of Product Development of FMW, Thomas Kurian, made a joint webcast about how Oracle was planning to integrate the products from the BEA acquisition. In cases where there is minimal functional overlap the BEA product will augment Oracle products, in some cases the Oracle product will become the strategic product and in others the BEA product will become strategic.
The webcast lasted for 1h 45mins so I will only summarise here what was immediately relevant to me, namely with a focus on Java web/call-centre custom apps - this means the development tools and application server, rather than for example, TP monitors or BI...[Read More]Practical ADF Application Deployment - Best Practices Summary
18 Jun 2008 by Simon Haslam (in Events)
Thanks to those of you who came along to my presentation at the Fusion Middleware Symposium day of ODTUG 2008 - I do hope it was useful. ODTUG is certainly very well run: a good example of this is that by yesterday afternoon I already had the results from delegate questionnaires!
Thankfully feedback was mostly positive; I appreciate your support. Of course it is useful to get the less satisfied feedback too as it gives me chance to put matters right in future. For instance...[Read More]What's the difference between TAF and FCF?
16 May 2008 by Simon Haslam (in HA)
One question I get asked quite a lot by customers is "what's the difference between Transparent Application Failover (TAF) and Fast Connection Failover (FCF) and should I be using one or the other or both"? Well, yesterday I gave a presentation at the UKOUG RAC & HA Special Interest Group on "Fast Connection Failover in Practice" and, whilst I only mentioned TAF in passing, I thought I'd expand a little on some of my comments.
So firstly let's start with the basics...
[Read More]Practical ADF Application Deployment paper
06 May 2008 by Simon Haslam (in ADF)
I'm particularly looking forward to the ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2008 conference, especially now that I've finally finished my "Practical ADF Application Deployment for Fusion Middleware Administrators" paper!
| I'm speaking on the "Fusion Middleware Best Practices" day, and am pleased to be sharing the stage with some of the best known names in the Oracle/ADF world: Duncan Mills, Paul Dorsey, Peter Koletzke, Eric Marcoux, Wilfred van der Deijl, Dan Norris and others. |  |
My presentation covers a variety of topics relevant to Oracle App Server admins, particularly those with a DBA rather than java background, who need to deploy ADF Faces/BC applications...
FMW 11g Beta and JDeveloper/ADF 11 TP4
02 May 2008 by Simon Haslam (in ADF)
Well, the gradual drift towards the release of FMW 11g continues.
Today JDeveloper 11 Technology Preview 4 was made available on OTN. This also includes a new release of ADF libraries (11.1.1.49.49 compared to 11.1.1.47.96 that was in TP3).
Plus the FMW 11g Beta program is still open here to qualified customers and partners.
There's lots of good stuff in 11g so hopefully we'll see the production release at, or before, Oracle OpenWorld (21-25 September)...
UKOUG App Server SIG - June 08 agenda published
25 Apr 2008 by Simon Haslam (in Events)
The next Special Interest Group is in London on 3rd June 2008. Our theme is "from Forms to ADF" including a sneak peek of Forms 11g New Features and experiences from users with live ADF systems.[Read More]AMD tests 45nm Quad-core Processors
10 Mar 2008 by Simon Haslam (in General)
AMD has test versions of 45nm quad-core Opteron chips running in its labs according to a recent article on The Register. |  |
Ryanair website 3 day scheduled shutdown
15 Feb 2008 by Simon Haslam (in General) | Comments (1)
This BBC article caught my eye yesterday: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7245378.stm. I couldn't find a source for this information on Ryanair's website on quick inspection. However I was rather surprised to see Ryanair scheduling a 3 day outage for a booking system upgrade given their almost total dependency on the website for booking flights.[Read More]Notes from Oracle OpenWorld 2007 Fusion Middleware Keynote Presentation
15 Nov 2007 by Simon Haslam (in General)
The Fusion Middleware Keynote presentation was given by Thomas Kurian at Oracle OpenWorld 2007. The talk lasts for over an hour, so I thought I'd summarise what was interesting to me, i.e. technologies applicable to mid-sized companies using Oracle as their strategic platform.[Read More]Welcome to my Fusion Middleware administration blog
14 Nov 2007 by Simon Haslam (in General)
Well, I've finally succumbed to starting a blog discussing the work I do with Oracle Application Server and Fusion Middleware products...[Read More]