UKOUG Tech & EBS Conference - Middleware Stream Suggestions

27 Nov 2009 by Simon Haslam (in Events)

 

Well, the UKOUG Technology & E-Business Suite annual conference has come around again quickly and starts on Monday. Each day has 14(!) streams running in parallel, focussed on database, development, middleware, business intelligence and E-Business Suite. For middleware enthusiasts this year there is 1 dedicated stream on Monday and 2 each on Tuesday and Wednesday... and lots of good stuff to see!

If you are able to attend it's well worth planning your sessions in advance - many is the time I've been to a conference and only noticed a session I would have liked to have seen afterwards. You can also build up a personalised agenda online and then use it to print a list of your sessions. Note: it handily allows you to pick more than one session for a given time slot so if you're undecided you can choose on the day.

So, on to the middleware content. There are Oracle Middleware Keynotes at the start of all three days - so even if you're only attending one day you'll hear strategic information from the people at the top! Let's start with those:

• Monday: OFM 11g: Functional Highlights and Business Value Drivers - John Aisien
  
• Tuesday: Fusion Middleware Application Server Strategy - Update to 11g and beyond - Mike Lehmann
• Wednesday: Oracle SOA Suite 11g: Overview and roadmap - Hugo Brand
  

I won't go through all the presentations on the agenda, but just pick out some that should be well worth attending:

Rule Based Event Processing for Congestion and Pollution Monitoring: This caught my eye it describes a protoype for a practical implementation of the new CEP functionality in SOA 11g (which I've still not got my head around yet!)

Tales from the WebLogic Front Line: I'm looking forward to this session which sounds like it will be full of war-stories!

Building Dynamic Oracle Application Server Environments with Oracle VM: Mike first presented this at the September UKOUG AS & MW SIG - it's a great introduction to OVM (a product increasingly relevant to middleware administrators) and Mike tells me he's been updating it for the latest release.

Authentication, SSO, and Authorisation for WebLogic Server Applications: This looks like how we integrate WebLogic with Oracle's Identity Management products.

Managing Oracle Connection in WebLogic with RAC and Data Guard: Alex is a very bright guy and this is bound to have some good demonstrations.

WebLogic Suite 11g - A look under the hood: all the latest and greatest WLS stuff from senior product management!

OPSS Introduction and best practices: unfortunately I'm not going to be able to get to this session as it clashes with ADF EMG. OPSS is the evolution of what was going to be JPS (in OC4J-based OFM 11g) and BEA's CSS and is the foundation for implementing security in 11gR1. Well worth finding out more.

I'm giving a couple of sessions readers might like too:

• Masterclass - WebLogic Server for Oracle Application Server Administrators: I will be explaining all the important new concepts, along with demonstrating an installation of OFM 11g starting from an clean OS and ending up with a deployed ADF app (i.e. comparable to an OAS Web and Java install type). As the title suggests, I will try to compare the OFM 11g/WebLogic way of doing things with OAS (especially 10.1.3) throughout, to hopefully show that much of what you already know about OAS will help with WLS. I'll also highlight some of the nice new WebLogic features too! No previous experience of WebLogic is required.
• Getting the best out of Hardware Load Balancers: the first session purely about hardware load balancers at an Oracle conference? Quite possibly.
  

There are several round-table discussion sessions at the conference. For exmaple, you might like:

• Application Server and Middleware Roundtable: come along for an informal round-table chat about any App. Server questions or issues you want to get off your chest.
• ADF Enterprise Methodology Group: Grant Ronald, Sten Vesterli and others will be along to talk about best practices in ADF development and deployment. All welcome.
  

Finally for the Twitter-ers out there, there's a #ukoug_tebs hash tag as well as ones for each session (e.g. #tebs_123 for session 123) and tweets will be displayed on a big screen in the reception area... you have been warned !

I look forward to seeing any readers of this blog - so do drop by and say hello!

ADF Dynamic Tabs Shell Template: Relevance for New Projects

17 Nov 2009 by Simon Haslam (in ADF)

At OpenWorld one of the new features touted for PS1 was promised to assist building Fusion-style applications, based on Oracle's own development experience. Immediately this sounded interesting! I must admit I was thinking it would be something like the old af:PanelPage component in 10.1.3, but in fact it is a new template supplied with ADF, called 'Dynamic Tabs Shell'. Now when I say 'template' I'm not really doing it justice - it's more of a 'power-template' complete with its own backing bean to provide functionality accessible from your web page (e.g. via EL). My interest in this feature is primarily from two angles: development team productivity: can use of this template make it quicker to build interfaces? embodiment of best practice: given that the people behind this have probably been heavily involved with Fusion Apps, can we look into the template to understand the best way to do things? Documentation for the template (including a worked example) is covered by the Oracle UI Shell Functional Pattern. It's quite a long article though so takes time to digest.

Before getting into too much into detail, let me pull out a few key sentences from the above document, that describe the intended purpose of the template:

"The most salient behavior supported by the UI Shell is dynamic tabs. The tabs are dynamic in that they are rendered and dismissed upon demand by the user. Developers can ramp up quickly and easily to create a rich client UI promoted by Oracle's User Experience teams." 

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What's New in Fusion Middleware 11gR1 PS1 & WebLogic 10.3.2?

13 Nov 2009 by Simon Haslam (in Install & Upgrade)

What's new? Good question! I stumbled into a whole load of new downloads for OFM 11gR1 PS1 this morning, including WebLogic 10.3.2, but have been unable to find out anything much about them. Whilst I had been expecting new versions of JDeveloper/ADF (see my comment a couple of days ago) and SOA, I didn't know we were getting the whole stack!

I spoke to a chum in Oracle Support who says apparently the WLS update is a minor release (with some fixes) but is primarily there to support changes for Patch Set 1 in the other middleware products runing on top of WebLogic. There was also an interesting comment from someone in Oracle on this OTN thread: http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=986264 suggesting that documentation is on its way.

Here's the list of the new OFM 11gR1 PS1 (i.e. 11.1.1.2) products:

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Book Review: Professional Oracle WebLogic Server

02 Nov 2009 by Simon Haslam (in Java)

I've been fortunate enough to get my hands on a review copy of the new 'Professional Oracle WebLogic Server' book, as soon to be published by Wrox / Wiley. Here are some first impressions as to how useful the book will be to an Oracle middleware administrator. Firstly this is a substantial tome (nearly 800 pages), and not one of those books padded out with lots of screenshots, large text or tangential quotes by famous people. That's a good start! This book is published under Wrox's 'Programmer to Programmer' banner and is clearly targetted at advanced developers rather than administrators. However, if you're a middleware administrator your bookshelf will probably have a motley collection of titles, ranging from database tuning to application development; unlike DBAs there aren't any books I can think of aimed squarely at making our jobs easier.

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Oracle OpenWorld 2009: Analysis from an ADF Perspective

31 Oct 2009 by Simon Haslam (in Events)  |  Comments (1)

As mentioned in my last post Oracle OpenWorld 2009, and specifically the iDevelop 'sub-conference,' had a lot to offer for people building enterprise applications with ADF. These were my ADF highlights: an excellent ADF debugging session by ADF-guru Steve Muench, two very good sessions on experiences from the Fusion Apps development teams (Steve Muench, Duncan Mills), a useful session on ADF re-use by Lynn Munsinger, some advanced ADF UI presentations by Frank Nimphius and Matthias Wessendorf, a detailed walk through of what's in, and coming, to the Team Productivity Center software by Susan Duncan, discussions about forthcoming (November) JDeveloper/ADF 11.1 Patchset 1 release, the ADF Enterprise Methodology Group sessions (of course!), e.g. see Shay Shmeltzer's blog. There were also a number of WebCenter presentations which are significant to people interested in ADF because WebCenter Spaces is built with ADF Faces on top of EJB/JPA (unfortunately I couldn't attend those at the time but most are available online from Oracle OpenWorld On Demand).

Some of the improvements coming in JDeveloper/ADF 11.1 Patchset 1 are...

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