OOW 2012 Networking in Pictures

30 Oct 2012 by Simon Haslam (in Events)

Yesterday Martin Nash wrote about why to attend Oracle OpenWorld and one of his key points was the benefit from meeting other Oracle professionals face-to-face. That got me thinking about the various non-presentation activities I got up to this year, so here's a quick post illustrated with a few photos.

OOW 2012 Summary for Fusion Middleware Architects & Administrators

29 Oct 2012 by Simon Haslam (in Events)

This is my usual post-OOW round up of news which I found interesting. For any readers who saw my presentation at the UKOUG App Server & Middleware SIG a couple of weeks ago this post follows on from that material but in a little more detail. For me these are the OOW12 middleware themes that came across: Platform evolution and maturity (including ADF mobile) Forthcoming increased application availability with improved database integration Layered product improvements in forthcoming patchsets (e.g. PS6 for BPM) Java (progression of JRockit tooling migration) Oracle (Public) Cloud starting to materialise plus some extensions (vapour?) Exa* hardware tweaks I cover most of these topics in more detail in the rest of the article.

New Free WebLogic Server Developer Licence

28 Sep 2012 by Simon Haslam (in General)

A week ago Alex Gorbachev alerted people on Twitter to a new licence that Oracle has introduced which allows developers to use WebLogic Server on their development machine for free! Here's the source: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/licenses/wls-dev-license-1703567.html Firstly, let me pull out the salient points: free to develop software and continue to maintain it applicable to only one user, i.e. no test servers physical or virtual desktops covered no support

OOW 2012 Sessions for Fusion Middleware Architects & Administrators

17 Sep 2012 by Simon Haslam (in Events)

Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is only a couple of weeks away and so I've been building up my personalised agenda.

The number of sessions on offer at OpenWorld can be totally overwhelming (and that's before you look at JavaOne and the other conferences running in parallel). Here are the sessions that caught my eye, so may be of interest to other middleware architects and administrators. It's often impossible to even find all the interesting sessions at OpenWorld, let alone attend them. Hopefully this post might provide a few pointers for interesting sessions you may have not noticed in Schedule Builder.

Firstly I do have a few sessions of my own (blatant plug!):

• Tips and Tricks for Hardening Oracle Fusion Middleware - a session with Oracle ACE and buddy Jacco Landlust. Between us we'll be sharing the list of less obvious (some downright obscure!) aspects of hardening a production Fusion Middleware cluster, how best to use them and caveats we've found along the way. Jacco has been beavering away preparing demos (mostly scripted of course - you know what we're like!) which we'll use to show the features in action.
  
• CON6564, Wednesday 3:30, Moscone South 310

• Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Database RAC: This is joint session with Frances Zhao from Oracle Product Management, whose team looks after the integration layers between WebLogic and the Oracle Database (amongst other things). Active GridLink for RAC is undergoing steady development in conjunction with new features in the (RAC) database so this is an exciting area for those with an Oracle DBA background and demanding availability requirements. Come along to find out what's in WebLogic 12c today and what might (might - under safe habour statement!) be coming along soon.
  

  • CON9058, Tuesday 11:45, Marriott Marquis - Salon 7

• ADF EMG User Group: A Peek into the Oracle ADF Architecture of Oracle Fusion Applications: In this session I'll be interviewing Ken Mizuta, one of the leaders of the Oracle's Fusion Applications project. As most of you will know Fusion Apps is (must be surely?) the biggest suite applications built on the ADF framework and by in parallel a team of thousands. Therefore I've got quite a "how do they do it?" questions and will be encouraging the audience to ask their own too. Chris Muir and I'm sure a few others from Oracle Product Management will be on hand too so bring along your ADF team development, architecture and performance questions! Note there's a whole day full of ADF EMG content at Moscone South - see Chris' blog post.
  
• UGF10463, Sunday 11:30, Moscone South 305

This post includes some of the other sessions I'm planning to attend along with some tips for those who are attending OpenWorld for the first time.

Virtualisation arrives for Exalogic 2 - Details from Launch Event

26 Jul 2012 by Simon Haslam (in Virtualization)

Yesterday, via a global webcast, Oracle launched "Exalogic 2.0" or, more precisely, "Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software 2.0" (EECS), i.e. the Exalogic X2-2 hardware is the same but the software that runs on it has been updated. This post considers some of the technical aspects of the launch (if you're interested in the marketing stuff try the Exalogic pages on oracle.com).

Hasan Rizvi highlighted the 4 key changes to EECS:

• Virtualisation including "isolation with support of IB partitioning"
  
• "Better performance"
  
• "Application to Disk" management
• Application Delivery Control