Time to consider upgrading Oracle EBS 11i to R12

Premier support for Oracle E-business Suite 11i ends in November 2010. Extended support fees have been waived until November 2011 if you choose to wait to upgrade. If you haven't already planned for it, you need to start planning your upgrade or you will have to pay Extended support fees after November 2011. Systems  must be on minimum patch levels to continue to on Extended support (New Minimum Patching Baselines for E-Business Suite 11i Extended Support).

Organizations should start planning (and budgeting) for their upgrade now if they are still running R11i. Understanding all of the factors invloved in an upgrade are critical to properly plan and budget for this type of project. Some key factors to consider are:

• Number and complexity of customizations
• Testing and support staff availability
• New features and functionality
• Corporate initatives
• Ability to manage the project internally
• New hardware/software requirements 
• Consulting needs

Once a strategy and plan for the upgrade are in place, calculate your costs, both internally and externally.  Do not underestimate the size and complexity of the upgrade.  Even if the implementation in your organization is considered 'vanilla', there are still many factors to consider.  Many application changes have occurred in R12 that may require system or business process changes in your organization.

This is also a perfect time to review test plans and testing strategy.   Many of those test plans are outdated and inaccurate since they were intially created.  Many organizations have testing documentation for their initial implementation and then never look at them again.  Now is the time to dust those off and update them accordingly.  Create a plan to keep them up to date as the business and systems change so that during the next cycle less time can be spent on testing documentation and more time can be spent on the important stuff like testing.

Infotegrity can help you with your planning and execution of the upgrade as well as provide details on how much extended support may cost you if you choose to delay your upgrade past November 2011.  Please Contact us for more information.

Best of luck.

White Paper Available - Managing Change in an Oracle EBS Environment

Excerpt from the paper:

Introduction – The purpose of this paper is to give organizations ideas and options on how to manage changes in their Oracle E-business Suite (EBS) environment. The paper is not specific to any version or release of software nor is it applicable only to EBS environments. The principles and ideas herein can be used for from a simple to complex system to manage, document, track and audit changes in an environment. The change management system that you put in place for your organization will depend on any number of outside or inside agencies or requirements. This paper will touch on topics that should satisfy the majority of those requirements such as internal auditors, Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC or HIPPAA. This paper can be used as a guide and you should consult with your audit and risk management teams on how and what you need to track in your organization.

What is a Change? – In setting up a change control system in your organization, you must first define the types of changes and which ones and how you would like to manage them. In an EBS environment, there are several types of changes to be managed, and each may have a different workflow for migration into production. The first is what I call master data. This would be objects like users, employees, customers, vendors, flexfield values and items. Secondly, are setup changes. This would be things like profile values and setup screen changes. The third type of change would be data fixes. This may be a fix from Oracle, or a fix developed by your own staff to fix a transactional issue. The final type of change is a very broad category defined as code changes. This can range from form personalization, custom reporting and descriptive flexfields to custom interfaces, workflows, database triggers and any other customizations you may have. This would also include Oracle provided patches and code changes. There may be changes that do not fit into any of these categories, and you should have a process for those as well.

If you would like to get a copy, please send en email to papers@infotegrity.com

Installing Oracle 11gR2 Standalone with ASM Part 1 – Install Grid Software

I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Oracle 11gR2 and play with some of the new features.  Here are some instructions for getting a standalone instance up and running using ASM on a VMware virtual.  Here is my virtual machine configuration:

• OEL5 (basic server install)
• 1.5GB Memory 1GB swap
• 10GB Disk w/4 partitions (not formatted) for ASM
• 1 Bridged NIC

The steps I followed for my installation are below.

1. Setup the environment by following the prerequisites for installing Oracle 11gR2 on Linux.
• I created a separate user (oragrid) and groups (asmadmin, asmdba, asmoper) for the grid software
2. Run the installer from your staging area
3. I chose Install and Configure for Standalone
   • 
4. Choose your language
   • 
5. Create ASM Disk group
   • 
   • You may have to change the Discovery Path to find your disks
   • 
6. Choose External redundancy and select the candidate disks
• 
7. Create passwords (Note I did not follow Oracle’s recommendations)
   • 
8. Select the operating system groups
   • 
9. Specify install locations
   • 
10. Create the inventory
    • 
11. Go through prerequisite checks.  I like the improvements here, and it will actually create fix scripts in some cases.  I will ignore my warnings, as I know about them.
    • 
12. Install summary
    • 
13. After install you will need to run 2 scripts as root
• /u01/oraInventory/orainstRoot.sh
• [root@oracle1 CVU_11.2.0.1.0_oragrid]# /u01/oraInventory/orainstRoot.sh
  Changing permissions of /u01/oraInventory.
  Adding read,write permissions for group.
  Removing read,write,execute permissions for world.

Changing groupname of /u01/oraInventory to oinstall.
The execution of the script is complete.
You have mail in /var/spool/mail/root

• /u01/app/product/11.2.0/grid/root.sh

Running Oracle 11g root.sh script...

The following environment variables are set as:
    ORACLE_OWNER= oragrid
    ORACLE_HOME=  /u01/app/product/11.2.0/grid

Enter the full pathname of the local bin directory: [/usr/local/bin]:
   Copying dbhome to /usr/local/bin ...
   Copying oraenv to /usr/local/bin ...
   Copying coraenv to /usr/local/bin ...

Creating /etc/oratab file...
Entries will be added to the /etc/oratab file as needed by
Database Configuration Assistant when a database is created
Finished running generic part of root.sh script.
Now product-specific root actions will be performed.
2009-09-23 15:14:59: Checking for super user privileges
2009-09-23 15:14:59: User has super user privileges
2009-09-23 15:14:59: Parsing the host name
Using configuration parameter file: /u01/app/product/11.2.0/grid/crs/install/crs
config_params
Creating trace directory
LOCAL ADD MODE
Creating OCR keys for user 'oragrid', privgrp 'oinstall'..
Operation successful.
CRS-4664: Node oracle1 successfully pinned.
Adding daemon to inittab
CRS-4123: Oracle High Availability Services has been started.
ohasd is starting
acfsroot: ACFS-9320: Missing advmutil.

acfsroot: ACFS-9320: Missing advmutil.bin.

acfsroot: ACFS-9320: Missing fsck.acfs.

acfsroot: ACFS-9320: Missing fsck.acfs.bin.

acfsroot: ACFS-9320: Missing mkfs.acfs.

acfsroot: ACFS-9320: Missing mkfs.acfs.

acfsroot: ACFS-9320: Missing mkfs.acfs.bin.

acfsroot: ACFS-9320: Missing mount.acfs.

acfsroot: ACFS-9320: Missing mount.acfs.bin.

acfsroot: ACFS-9320: Missing acfsdbg.

acfsroot: ACFS-9320: Missing acfsdbg.bin.

acfsroot: ACFS-9320: Missing acfsutil.

acfsroot: ACFS-9320: Missing acfsutil.bin.

acfsroot: ACFS-9301: ADVM/ACFS installation can not proceed:

acfsroot: ACFS-9302: No installation files found at /u01/app/product/11.2.0/grid
/install/usm/EL5/x86_64/2.6.18-8/2.6.18-8.el5-x86_64/bin.

oracle1     2009/09/23 15:15:35     /u01/app/product/11.2.0/grid/cdata/oracle1/b
ackup_20090923_151535.olr
Successfully configured Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Standalone Server
Updating inventory properties for clusterware
Starting Oracle Universal Installer...

Checking swap space: must be greater than 500 MB.   Actual 3007 MB    Passed
The inventory pointer is located at /etc/oraInst.loc
The inventory is located at /u01/oraInventory
'UpdateNodeList' was successful.

14. Install of grid software complete.  In the next post, we’ll install the database.

Oracle Critical Patch Update Advisory – July 2009 for EBS 11i Customers

For customers running Oracle EBS 11i, there are no EBS specific patches released as part of this update.  Check for your Database and Middleware versions to see if there are any patches relevant to your environment.  You can find the CPU information here.

When You Think WMS, Think Oracle!

When WMS or Warehouse Management Systems came out, some considered WMS as a four-letter word. Early WMS systems were confusing, cumbersome, and let's face it, down right expensive. But, that was then and this is now. WMS systems have come a long way in enabling companies to optimize inventories and gain efficiencies across their supply chain.

Oracle Warehouse Management enables organizations to transform their materials management operations to agile fulfillment centers through optimal use of inventory supply and warehouse resources. Oracle WMS leverages a flexible framework that provides supply and demand matching, advanced task management, automation hardware support and support for the breadth of materials management processes frequently required in warehouses, manufacturing facilities and service depots.

Ok, so how can Oracle WMS help you in this day and age of cost cutting, downsizing and economic downturn?

Oracle WMS can help:

• Improve warehouse space, labor and resource utilization
• Support advanced and nontraditional warehousing business flows
• Enable customers to adapt to changing business needs & environments

Some of Oracle WMS's key features include:

MOBILITY
•Mobile RF-based execution user interfaces
•Leverages AIDC technologies such as Barcode and RFID
•Personalize mobile transaction forms for user needs
•Compliance with UCC, EAN and other GTIN product labeling standards
•RFID automated transactions
•Material handling systems integration
•Voice pick capabilities

INBOUND LOGISTICS
•Receiving (ASN & Non ASN Based) and inspection
•Directed put away
•Multi step material routings

INVENTORY CONTROL
•Lot, sublot, serial and revision control
•Dual unit of measure control (catchweight)
•Material attribute tracking
•Flexible material status & holds
•Consigned and vendor managed inventory
•Demand driven replenishment and forward picking locations

TASK MANAGEMENT
•Complete labor management solution
•Flexible pick methodologies such as cluster/batch pick, zone pick, pick and pass, order pick and wave pick
•Rules based task dispatching and product allocation
•Cartonization, guided consolidation and packing
•Automated task prioritization & reprioritization
•Managerial monitoring dashboards
•Manufacturing and service components picking
•Finished goods completion & put away

OUTBOUND LOGISTICS
•Directed picking, consolidation and trailer loading
•ASN generation
•Integration with Oracle Transportation Management for dock appointment and, load sequencing

Oracle® Warehouse Management (WMS) enables companies to maximize their utilization of labor, space and equipment investments by coordinating and optimizing resource usage and material flows across a global supply chain on a single platform.

Infotegrity can help you use Oracle WMS to "lean and green" your supply chain. We offer managed services as well as consulting around outsourcing, outsourcing management and business continuity planning. Please contact us to see how we can help you improve your supply chain, reduce costs, adopt best practices and enhance your competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

Why Use Oracle to "Lean & Green" Your Supply Chain?

Simply put, Oracle is best-in-class when it comes to innovative and integrative supply chain solutions. Winner of the following awards (to name a few), Oracle's supply chain management (SCM) applications continue to enable companies to weather the storm of our current economy and come out on top.

* 'Best Supply Chain Management System' Intelligent Enterprise 2007 Readers' Choice Award
* 'The Supply Chain Software Award' Winner of Supply Chain Asia Logistics Awards 2007
* 'Best Supply Chain Software Solution Provider' Supply Chain Excellence Awards organized by SCMLogistics World 2006.

The following companies have realized tremendous savings and competitive advantage by using Oracle's SCM applications:

* Ingersoll Rand improved productivity by 50%, cut supplier support burden 75%, and reduced MRO costs by 20%
* U-Penn: $77.5 million in documented cost savings
* VeriSign: Cut error rates by more than 80% and boosted productivity by 230%
* Boeing: Increased volume discounts by 5%
* UPS: Reduced cycle time by 75%
* Pella: Reduced cycle time by 86%
* Alcoa: Reduced purchasing processing costs by 89%

And you can too!

Infotegrity can help you use Oracle to "lean and green" your supply chain. We offer managed services as well as consulting around outsourcing, outsourcing management and business continuity planning. Please contact us to see how we can help you improve your supply chain, reduce costs, adopt best practices and enhance your competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

Elephants, Jaguars, and Tortises, Oh my!

This APICS Extra just graced my inbox and it's just too good not to share with the general Supply Chain community. There are some good, solid, basic principles here that sometimes get forgotten. Take a read. (More info at www.apics.org/extra).

Leading the Way to Agile Inventory

In the current cash crunch, it is particularly important to achieve responsive and flexible inventory management practices. Most inventory segmentation approaches involve ABC classification based on the amount or value of the inventory. While this may help manage inventory, the approach is not as useful when it comes to improving agility.

Inventory is the cumulative effect of demand and supply variability. As such, in order to advance a company’s processes and capabilities, it is necessary for businesspeople to identify the root causes that govern the supply-and-demand interaction. If professionals don’t focus on underlying issues, there may be less inventory—but there also may be fewer customers. The challenge is to understand more precisely what actions to take.

I recommend an inventory-classification system based on both sales and inventory turns. It provides decision makers with a clear plan by making it easier to focus on the items that matter. First, let’s classify the four types of products as

* elephants—items that are big and slow-moving
* jaguars—items that are big and fast-moving
* tortoises—items that are small and slow-moving
* rabbits—items that are small and fast moving.

Once inventory items have been divided among these categories, it’s time to ask the following questions:

* What are the products that make up the elephants? What is the difference between these products and the jaguars? How can elephants be migrated into jaguars?
* Are there differences among distribution centers or plants? What cross-learning can be facilitated in order to spread best practices?
* Are the tortoises consuming more than their fair share of managers’ time and attention? Is it worth it?
* Can rabbits be migrated into jaguars via special promotions or pricing?

The next step to the segmentation approach is to plot on a matrix all the products, product families, and stockkeeping units (depending on the level of analysis). Find the inventory turn for every product, and use an appropriate time frame.

Create a scatter plot, charting all products’ sales value on the Y axis and inventory turns on the X axis. Find the average for the industry and the average revenue per employee. Multiply the value by the number of employees in the company, and divide by the number of products to determine the industry average per-product sales value.

The final step is to see which of the following industry standards describe the business:

* Leader: Most products have above-average inventory turns and above-average industry sales. Professionals whose companies fall in this category should continue doing what they are doing to sustain and enhance their competitive edge.
* Laggard: Most products have below-average inventory turns and below-average sales. Anyone in this situation must act with a sense of urgency. Think of how Compaq lost to Dell because its velocity was lagging. Be careful to avoid the same fate.
* Average: Those situated in the middle must make targeted actions. Few companies remain in the Average category for very long. In time, they will gravitate toward either Leader or Laggard. Head in the right direction.

Strategies for improvement
What can professionals at Laggard and Average companies do to improve? Businesses in the Laggard category likely have too much variety. Few businesspeople realize the true cost of adding new products to the mix. Fewer still grasp the importance of regularly pruning product portfolios and keeping them trim. As a result, their efforts become diluted. Henry Ford understood the critical importance of variety when he said, “You can have any color car as long as it is black.”

While eliminating variety may not be an option, it’s certainly possible to manage it more effectively. Begin by asking the following questions:

* Can processes be streamlined to cope with variety? While many strategies, such as postponement, have been attempted, experience indicates that most Laggard companies don’t have the foundations to implement them.
* Can the number of packaging options be consolidated?
* Can the number of styles and colors be reduced?
* Are there products disrupting the flow that can be copacked?
* Are there any “yesterday’s winners” being carried far beyond their intended life spans?

Average companies likely have islands of best practices. The challenge will be to find these islands and make them enterprisewide practices. Identify the most natural way of segmenting performance—by plant, distribution center, store, product family, division, market, and so on. Draw the agile inventory chart for each segment, and find the segment that has Leader characteristics. Identify the systems, processes, tools, policies, and practices that result in superior performance. Some common themes including the following:

* Leaders plan, replenish, manufacture, and distribute frequently.
* They have sophisticated tools for rapid planning, simulation, and decision making that enable quick response to changing situations.
* Leaders have systems that offer visibility on the true state of affairs. Creating an environment in which people know their highest responsibilities are to be objective and provide real visibility can drastically improve performance and predictability. Specifically, Leaders invest in information systems (to provide visibility) and reward systems (that encourage the right kind of employee behavior).

It’s also important for those at Average companies to use a simulation or optimization tool to better understand the impact any changes will have on sales, operations, and finance. Make sure every choice is well-thought-out and balanced. Time and again, businesspeople make lopsided decisions. For example, executives at one business eliminated all loss-making products, considering only the financial impact. This choice resulted in a spreading of the same fixed expenses over a smaller revenue base. Products became more expensive to make, there was more loss, and the firm got caught in a vicious downward spiral. It’s crucial to consider all factors, simulate the implementation in a virtual environment, and dissect a change from all angles before deciding to move ahead.

Finally, maintain a continuous-improvement mindset. Start with a baseline set of measures across sales, operations, and finance. Make a few changes. Test their effectiveness. Measure the impact of the changes on sales, operations, and financial metrics. Are they in line with expectations? What are the differences? What are the reasons for the differences? What can be changed the next time around?

Keeping a sense of urgency is vital on the way to becoming a Leader. Once the goal is achieved, focus on sustaining momentum.

Oracle Acquires mValent

On Feb. 4, 2009, Oracle announced the acquisition of mValent to extend the capabilities of Oracle Enterprise Manager. Check out the details of the press release here.

Green Supply Chain

Ok, so nobody really gets all that excited to talk about Supply Chain. Well, maybe there are a few of you out there, but it probably doesn’t come up in every day conversation. But, when the words “green,” “sustainable,” and “environment” get thrown into the mix, supply chain starts to draw more attention. And it should. Why? Because “greening” your supply chain may be one the most important things a company can do reduce costs, and more importantly, grow your business.

There are many ways to cut cost, streamline and optimize to improve your bottom line. And there are many factors to consider for those who want to become more environmentally friendly. There are many opportunities for companies to “green up” their supply chains starting with how they source to how orders are fulfilled.

Greening the supply chain can generate environmental benefits as well as financial results. Oracle EBS and Supply Chain Applications can help you do this by:

• Reducing risk by managing a product's environmental compliance in its design rather than making any necessary costly corrections later in its lifecycle
• Optimizing supply networks for production cost and time, as well as environmental cost and risks by using strategic network optimization tools
• Reducing manufacturing costs and environmental impacts by applying lean manufacturing principles to environmentally sensitive components and production operations
• Reducing transportation costs while also reducing emissions using transportation management tools
• Reducing energy costs and extending the life of assets by managing them more efficiently using enterprise asset management and intelligent device monitoring
• Increasing reverse supply chain efficiencies while addressing increasing product take-back requirements using warehouse management and depot repair solutions

Infotegrity can help you use Oracle to green your supply chain. We offer managed services as well as consulting around outsourcing, outsourcing management and business continuity planning. Please contact us to see how we can help you improve your supply chain, reduce costs, adopt best practices and enhance your competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

Using CLOB’s in PL/SQL (10g)

We recently had a customer complain of getting the following error in the custom PL/SQL code:

ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error

This is a generic error, so we had to do a little digging.  What we found is, the program is generating an email message, and has a CLOB defined for the message body.  They were appending to the CLOB using the following syntax:

l_clob := l_clob || ‘some text or variable’;

This worked fine for any variable or text that was a VARCHAR2, but when it tried to add any numbers after about 2000 bytes, it would throw the above error.  What we determined is that Oracle performs an implicit TO_CHAR function on the variable when it appends it, and treats the CLOB variable as a VARCHAR2 instead of a CLOB.  Here is a simple procedure that generates the error:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE clob_test_error
AS
   l_clob     CLOB;
BEGIN
  FOR i IN 1 .. 5000
   LOOP
      l_clob   := l_clob || i;
   END LOOP;
EXCEPTION
WHEN OTHERS THEN
  DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('Error: ' || SQLERRM);
END;
And you can see it generates the error:

shersh@XE> set serveroutput on timing on
shersh@XE> exec clob_test_error;
Error: ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.56

It’s an easy fix, by adding an explicit TO_CHAR conversion of the variable as below, the procedure completes successfully:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE clob_test_using_to_char
AS
   l_clob     CLOB;
  BEGIN
  FOR i IN 1 .. 5000
   LOOP
      l_clob   := l_clob || TO_CHAR (i);
   END LOOP;
EXCEPTION
WHEN OTHERS THEN
   DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('Error: ' || SQLERRM);
  END;

Running this one completes without error:

shersh@XE> exec clob_test_using_to_char;

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.84

So we’re all good right?  Well then I thought maybe there is a more efficient way to do this using DBMS_LOB.  Lo and behold, DBMS_LOB seems faster.  I did not do any extended stats gathering, but I am guessing not doing the TO_CHAR and using the DBMS_LOB function is more efficient.  Here is the code and results:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE clob_test_using_dbms_lob
AS
   l_clob     CLOB;
BEGIN
   DBMS_LOB.createtemporary (lob_loc => l_clob, cache => TRUE);
   FOR i IN 1 .. 5000
   LOOP
      DBMS_LOB.write (lob_loc => l_clob,
                      amount => LENGTH (i),
                      offset => 1,
                      buffer => i
      );
   END LOOP;
EXCEPTION
   WHEN OTHERS THEN
   DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('Error: ' || SQLERRM);
END;

And the results:

shersh@XE> exec clob_test_using_dbms_lob;
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.20

So when using CLOB’s in PL/SQL, I would recommend using the built in DBMS_LOB functions instead of treating CLOB’s as a VARCHAR.

Check your account profiles (and document them!)

At some point, we've all spent countless hours troubleshooting problems that seemed "catastrophic" at the time, but are resolved by a simple fix. More often than not, it turns out that the issue could have been avoided completely with just a bit of preventative maintenance. Over the course of a project, things get overlooked or taken for granted, and sooner or later, something significant gets missed.

We experienced this recently with an eBusiness Suite environment. We noticed an apparent problem with the concurrent manager service - several jobs were backing up, and none of the individual managers seemed to be running. We made the decision to restart the service, but could not get it to start properly. We also noticed that the login URL was not loading correctly, either.

So, what was going on here? No changes had been made to the system recently, and a simple restart of a service should not be this difficult. After a bit of investigation, it turned out that the APPS database account was locked. Several months ago, a database upgrade had been performed. We concluded that during that process, the default account profile (including the condition to lock an account after 10 failed login attempts) had been applied to nearly all database accounts.

The APPS, APPLSYS, and APPLSYSPUB accounts deserve special attention. When there is a problem with one of these accounts, it can affect all users of your environment. Administrators should be careful with these accounts, especially if there is potential for them to lock automatically under any circumstances. Rather than setting them to lock under certain conditions, it is generally a better practice to use strong passwords and to update them on a regular schedule. Otherwise, you risk unnecessary downtime.

As is often the case, a bit of careful inspection and documentation might have helped us avoid this problem completely. When making significant changes such as a database upgrade, it is important to fully review and evaluate the scope of the changes being made. Make notes as appropriate, and make sure they are available to all necessary personnel. This is important for providing ongoing support. A little time spent on documentation goes a long way toward minimizing problems down the road. (But you already knew that, didn't you?)

Microsoft IE8 NOT Ready for Oracle E-business Suite

As Steven Chan recently posted on his blog, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 is not yet certified for oracle E-business Suite 11i or 12. 

Organizations using Oracle E-business Suite should block users from downloading and using Microsoft IE8 until the issues have been worked out by Oracle.

IE8 will be available via Automatic Update, Windows Update and Microsoft Update and rolled out by platform. 

Microsoft has announced that they've made the IE8 Blocker Toolkit available to desktop administrators.  The IE8 Blocker Toolkit allows desktop administrators to prevent end-users from being automatically upgraded to IE8.  For full details, see:

    * IE8 Blocker Toolkit Available Today! (Microsoft website)

Offshore Outsourcing Concerns

With all of the recent excitement going on with Satyam and some concerns in the past of data theft, are US based businesses going to switch back to an in-house model or look elsewhere for IT and business process outsourcing?  Can the offshore model continue to work, and if so, what do companies need to do to protect themselves?  For Satyam in particular, who really is to blame?  Let me try and answer each. 

First, will companies continue to outsource work offshore?  Most likely, but the cost advantages of off-shoring will decrease as better internal oversight is needed and more comprehensive review of the outsourcing companies is required.  With the current recession, cheaper labor is available onshore, and may make it more advantageous for businesses to bring their outsourced work either back in-house or at least back onshore where they can keep a better eye on them.  I believe some companies will bring some work back home. Others will diversify, and move work to other countries, but that has its own inherent risks.

Some of the more popular outsourcing countries have their own issues.  Here are a few:

• China – fear of data and intellectual property theft
• Russia – see China
• Brazil – stability of government
• Israel – stability of region

Any company with outsourced work must make sure it has Business Continuity Plans in place in the event that something happens to their outsourcing provider.  This needs to be an integral part of the company’s overall BCP.  This is not easy or inexpensive, but must be done. 

Companies can diversify their outsourcing contracts across multiple providers, but this has issues as well.  Coordination of work can lead to an adversarial work environment as the different providers fight for work and blame.  A strong corporate lead and stringent SLA’s and processes must be in place in order for this to work successfully.

For Satyam in particular, the Indian government was lax in their oversight, and PriceWaterhouseCoopers India seemed to drop the ball as well.  So how could a company have protected themselves in this instance?  Quite frankly it is difficult, unless you send in your own internal audit team to review the books and operations, which would negate any cost savings achieved with outsourcing in the first place.

Infotegrity provides services to help you figure out how you can make sure you are protected.  We offer managed services as well as consulting around outsourcing, outsourcing management and business continuity planning.  Please contact us to see how we can help you protect your business and maybe save you some money along the way.

Is Oracle interested in Salesforce.com?

This article contends that Salesforce.com may have approached Oracle to guage their interest in an acquisition. This may raise a few eyebrows, but probably comes as no surprise to anyone.

What I am surprised is why Microsoft would not be interested in Salesforce.com as well. I know that they are pursuing Yahoo, and are interested in Yahoo's search and ad revenues, but they are also pushing heavily their cloud computing offerings of which a SaaS CRM service would fit nicely. While online ad revenues can be a nice profit, Microsoft needs to continue to be a player in the enterprise market, and Salesforce.com would go a long way in keeping them firmly entrenched in many enterprises, while giving them a nice platform to roll out additional cloud applications. If Oracle gets Salesforce.com, how much further does that put Microsoft behind Oracle in Enterprise applications?

Would I like to see Oracle gobble up Saleforce.com? Sure - it bolster's Oracle's SaaS/OnDemand products, but wither Siebel? I know Oracle was planning to make Siebel OnDemand a direct competitor to Salesforce.com. So if they make the deal, what then? Does Siebel simply become the on premise CRM solution, and Salesforce.com the cloud solution? Oracle has many horses in the stable, but could this be one too many, or one too many studs?

Lastly, it may be a good buy simply from the author's assertion that Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, would be a logical successor to Larry Ellison. He has that same swagger, and desire to be #1, and I think he would be a great leader for Oracle. So that begs the question - would Oracle buy Salesforce.com just to get Mr. Benioff?

Oracle E-Business Suite: Query, Report & Print Output Options

The most common reporting tools used in the Oracle E-Business Suite are:

• Oracle Reports: Fixed format reports delivered with the 11i release were built on this tool. This is the most used tool for reporting on Oracle E-Business Suite. Most customizations of available reports are built with this tool. Once customized the output of the report can be delivered in Excel, Word, Acrobat documents or text format.

• Oracle Discoverer: is an intuitive tool for creating reports and performing on-line analysis. Discoverer uses the EUL (End User Layer), a metadata definition, which hides the complexity of the database from the end user and provides easy to use wizards for creating reports to suite individual needs. The flexibility of this tool allows the user to create cross tab reports that perform like pivot tables in Excel.

• Oracle XML Publisher: is a new Oracle tool for reporting. It enables users to utilize a familiar desktop tool, like MS Word or MS Excel, to create and maintain their own report. At runtime, XML Publisher merges the custom templates with the concurrent request extracts data to generate output in PDF, HTML, RTF and EXCEL.

• RXi Report: (Variable reports) – variable format reports delivered with the E-Business 11i. With this tool a user has the ability to print the same report with multiple layouts. The user can also choose which columns he requires on a particular report. This tool is most used on Oracle Financials Applications

• FSG Reports (Financial Statement Generator): is a powerful report building tool for Oracle General Ledger. Some of benefits of using this tool are that a user can generate financial reports and schedule reports to run automatically. FSG Reports are available for the general ledger responsibility only and can be used to see key financial account balances.

• Business Intelligence System (BI): is a set of tools to provide high level information for the managers (decision makers) to run their business such as the profitability of a particular business unit. The information this tool provides helps managers to take the right decision with the daily data that is uploaded on their systems.

Every organization is unique and the standard reports delivered with Oracle E-Business Suite will never meet all the reporting requirements of every organization. Choosing the right reporting tool for effective business decision making is critical to every Oracle E-Business Suite implementation.

Database 11gR1 Version 11.1.0.7 Certified with EBS 11i

Here is a link to the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog that now lists Oracle 11gR1 version 11.0.0.7 Certified with Oracle EBS 11i. Note that this database version is not yet certified with R12, nor is it certified with Database Vault 11.1.0.7.

Oracle SQL Developer and TOAD

While doing some development with some large tables recently, I found that Oracle's SQL Developer seems to die out after trying to export > 100k records. It doesn't really error out, it just dies, without error, and consumes memory. I have only done some limited trials with large data volumes, but ended up going to good old SQL*Plus to get the proper output, as I was pressed for time. I plan on doing some more detailed analysis to see what the magic number of records is, and if there is any logging I can turn on to see what is really happening.

I would normally use Quest Software's TOAD for Oracle for this type of work, but I was using a customer supplied laptop, and did not want to install any unlicensed software. I have found that SQL Developer is good for some things, and shows a lot of promise, but for any real hardcore development or database work, I find myself turning to TOAD most often.

I also have a few MySQL databases that I need to maintain and run reports/queries against, and use TOAD for MySQL Freeware whenever I need to do some work on it. I have a few monthly reports I run to extract data, and have TOAD set up to run them for me, and really like the feature to export the results directly into a running Excel instance at the highlighted cell.

Workflow Business Events API's Part 2

In Part 1, I discussed how to get the information for Business Events using the Workflow Business Event API's. Here I will discuss how to create Business Events and Subscriptions using the same packages:

1) wf_events_pkg
2) wf_event_subscriptions_pkg

To add a new event from scratch, the wf_events_pkg.receive procedure can be used. Here is an example of creating a new custom event:

DECLARE
l_xml_txt varchar2(4000);
l_evt_name varchar2(100) := 'oracle.apps.xxcust.event.NewEvent';
l_evt_desc varchar2(255) := 'Custom event created by apps';
BEGIN
l_xml_txt := '<WF_TABLE_DATA>
<WF_EVENTS>
<VERSION>1.0</VERSION>
<GUID>#NEW</GUID>
<NAME>'||l_evt_name||'</NAME>
<TYPE>EVENT</TYPE>
<STATUS>ENABLED</STATUS>
<GENERATE_FUNCTION/>
<OWNER_NAME>APPS</OWNER_NAME>
<OWNER_TAG>APPS</OWNER_TAG>
<CUSTOMIZATION_LEVEL>U</CUSTOMIZATION_LEVEL>
<LICENSED_FLAG>Y</LICENSED_FLAG>
<JAVA_GENERATE_FUNC/>
<DISPLAY_NAME>'||l_evt_name||'</DISPLAY_NAME>
<DESCRIPTION>'||l_evt_desc||'</DESCRIPTION>
</WF_EVENTS>
</WF_TABLE_DATA>';
-- Create the event
WF_EVENTS_PKG.RECEIVE(l_xml_txt);
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Event: '||l_evt_name||' created');
COMMIT;
EXCEPTION
WHEN OTHERS THEN
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('ERROR CODE: '||SQLCODE);
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('ERROR MESSAGE: '||SQLERRM);
ROLLBACK;
END;

I would like to point out the "#NEW" token in the GUID tag. This indicates to the package that this is a new event and it needs to generate the GUID for the event. The GUID is the global unique id for the event and it is a RAW datatype. After successfully generating the event, we can query the GUID:

SELECT guid
FROM wf_events
WHERE name = 'oracle.apps.xxcust.event.NewEvent';

We will need the GUID when we add a subscription to the event. To add a subscription that calls a PL/SQL procedure, use the following block:

DECLARE
l_xml VARCHAR2 (4000);
l_evt_guid RAW (16) := '523DA1719EE6381EE0440003BAAFAFC6';
l_rule_func VARCHAR2 (100) := 'show_event_parameters.process_event';
-- Custom PL/SQL function
l_sub_guid RAW (16);
BEGIN
l_xml :=
'
<WF_TABLE_DATA>
<WF_EVENT_SUBSCRIPTIONS>
<VERSION>1.0</VERSION>
<GUID>#NEW</GUID>
<SYSTEM_GUID>#LOCAL</SYSTEM_GUID>
<SOURCE_TYPE>LOCAL</SOURCE_TYPE>
<SOURCE_AGENT_GUID/>
<EVENT_FILTER_GUID>'|| l_evt_guid||'</EVENT_FILTER_GUID>
<PHASE>50</PHASE>
<STATUS>ENABLED</STATUS>
<RULE_DATA>KEY</RULE_DATA>
<OUT_AGENT_GUID/>
<TO_AGENT_GUID/>
<PRIORITY>120</PRIORITY>
<RULE_FUNCTION>'|| l_rule_func||'</RULE_FUNCTION>
<JAVA_RULE_FUNC/>
<STANDARD_TYPE/>
<STANDARD_CODE/>
<ON_ERROR_CODE>ABORT</ON_ERROR_CODE>
<ACTION_CODE>CUSTOM_RG</ACTION_CODE>
<WF_PROCESS_TYPE/>
<WF_PROCESS_NAME/>
<PARAMETERS/>
<OWNER_NAME>fnd</OWNER_NAME>
<OWNER_TAG>fnd</OWNER_TAG>
<CUSTOMIZATION_LEVEL>U</CUSTOMIZATION_LEVEL>
<LICENSED_FLAG>Y</LICENSED_FLAG>
<DESCRIPTION/>
<EXPRESSION/>
</WF_EVENT_SUBSCRIPTIONS>
</WF_TABLE_DATA>';
wf_event_subscriptions_pkg.receive (x_message => l_xml);
COMMIT;
SELECT guid
INTO l_sub_guid
FROM wf_event_subscriptions
WHERE event_filter_guid = l_evt_guid;
DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('Subscription created GUID: '||l_sub_guid);
EXCEPTION
WHEN OTHERS
THEN
DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('ERROR CODE: ' || SQLCODE);
DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('ERROR MESSAGE: ' || SQLERRM);
ROLLBACK;
END;

So now we have created an event and added a subscription to that event using the Workflow Business Events API's. You can create any number of subscriptions with all of the same options that you have from the gui.

There is another method that can be used to extract and load events and subscriptions using FNDXLOAD, but that is a topic for another post.

Workflow Business Events API's Part 1

We were having some issues with our OA Framework forms and needed to create Business Events and subscriptions for testing. I was reading through the Oracle Workflow API Reference and found the following API's:

1. wf_events_pkg
2. wf_event_subscriptions_pkg

Each of these has 2 useful functions/procedures, generate and receive. The generate function will generate an XML document that can be used later to recreate the event or subscription. In order to use the generate function, you will need to GUID (Global Unique ID) for the event and subscription. You can get the guid's from the wf_events and wf_event_subscriptions tables with the following query:

SQL> select we.guid EVENT_GUID, wes.guid SUBSCRIPTION_GUID
2 from wf_events we
3 , wf_event_subscriptions wes
4 where we.name = 'oracle.apps.ar.hz.CustAccount.create'
5 and wes.event_filter_guid = we.guid
6 and wes.status = 'ENABLED';

EVENT_GUID SUBSCRIPTION_GUID
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
89F5D0A2F6F7318CE03408002092A95D 204EC03F44A3198DE0440003BACE26A6

SQL>

Below is an example of using the generate function, and sample output with the GUID's from above:

SQL>
SQL> DECLARE
2 l_xml varchar2(32767);
3 l_guid raw(16) := '89F5D0A2F6F7318CE03408002092A95D';
4 begin
5 l_xml := wf_events_pkg.generate(x_guid => l_guid);
6 insert into t values (l_xml);
7 commit;
8 end;
9 /

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>
SQL> select * from t;

<wf_table_data>
<wf_events>
<version>1.0</version>
<guid>#NEW</guid>
<name>oracle.apps.ar.hz.CustAccount.create</name>
<type>EVENT</type>
<status>ENABLED</status>
<generate_function>
<owner_name>Oracle Trading Community</owner_name>
<owner_tag>AR</owner_tag>
<customization_level>L</customization_level>
<licensed_flag>Y</licensed_flag>
<java_generate_func>
<display_name>oracle.apps.ar.hz.CustAccount.create</display_name>
<description>oracle.apps.ar.hz.CustAccount.create</description>
</java_generate_func>
</generate_function>
</wf_events>
</wf_table_data>

SQL>
SQL> declare
2 l_xml varchar2(32767);
3 l_guid raw(16) := '204EC03F44A3198DE0440003BACE26A6';
4 begin
5 l_xml := wf_event_subscriptions_pkg.generate(x_guid => l_guid);
6 insert into t values (l_xml);
7 commit;
8 end;
9 /

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>
SQL> select * from t;
<WF_TABLE_DATA>
<WF_EVENT_SUBSCRIPTIONS>
<VERSION>1.0</VERSION>
<GUID>204EC03F44A3198DE0440003BACE26A6</GUID>
<SYSTEM_GUID>1B752B538AE54333E0440003BAB24929</SYSTEM_GUID>
<SOURCE_TYPE>LOCAL</SOURCE_TYPE>
<SOURCE_AGENT_GUID/>
<EVENT_FILTER_GUID>oracle.apps.ar.hz.CustAccount.create</EVENT_FILTER_GUID>
<PHASE>500</PHASE>
<STATUS>ENABLED</STATUS>
<RULE_DATA>KEY</RULE_DATA>
<OUT_AGENT_GUID/>
<TO_AGENT_GUID/>
<PRIORITY>50</PRIORITY>
<RULE_FUNCTION>hz_event_elt.hz_param_delete</RULE_FUNCTION>
<JAVA_RULE_FUNC/>
<STANDARD_TYPE/>
<STANDARD_CODE/>
<ON_ERROR_CODE/>
<ACTION_CODE/>
<WF_PROCESS_TYPE/>
<WF_PROCESS_NAME/>
<PARAMETERS/>
<OWNER_NAME>Oracle Collections</OWNER_NAME>
<OWNER_TAG>IEX</OWNER_TAG>
<CUSTOMIZATION_LEVEL>L</CUSTOMIZATION_LEVEL>
<LICENSED_FLAG>Y</LICENSED_FLAG>
<DESCRIPTION>Oracle Collections updates Collectors by Territory.</DESCRIPTION>
<EXPRESSION/>
</WF_EVENT_SUBSCRIPTIONS>
</WF_TABLE_DATA>
SQL>

As you can see we can then make these events portable when migrating from one environment to the next using the XML generated here. In Part 2 I will cover the the receive or create functions, and show how you can create events and subscriptions using the API's.

Oracle 11g - Categories of Innovation

This is a continuation of yesterday's post about the Oracle 11g launch last week in NYC. Chuck Rozwat, Executive Vice President of Server Technologies was the next speaker, and he took up most of the remainder of the presentation. He gave some more details about some of the exciting features of 11g and grouped them into 4 "Categories of Innovation". During each category discussion, a customer was brought out to discuss what they are or plan on using 11g for to help their business innovate in their industry. I will follow Chuck's grouping and which features were discussed during each segment.

Categories of Innovation

1. Better integration of all data types
1. Oracle Fast Files - faster than linux/ntfs filesystem for accessing unstructured data
2. Binary XML - 15x faster than XML LOBS in 10g
3. Several new data types:
1. RFID
2. DICOM
3. 3D Spatial
2. Managing data growth
1. Advanced partitioning - Partition Advisor
1. Automated partitioning by interval
   
1. Continue to create partitions on the fly
2. Automated partitioning by reference
1. Automatically maintains references when partitions are created
3. Business driven partitioning by new composite
1. Maintain partitions based on business rules
2. Compression - Advanced Compression
1. Typical 2-3x compression, up to 10x in some cases
3. Highest quality of service at lower cost
1. Faster performance (some examples)
   
1. RAC up to 70% faster
2. Java JIT compiler up to 11x faster
3. Secure Backup 25% faster
4. Query caches 25% faster
5. Stats collection 10x faster
   
2. OLAP based Materialized Views
1. merge OLAP cache with MView
3. Security and Compliance
1. Transparent Data Encryption
2. Secure (encrypted) Backup and Compression
3. Advanced Security
1. Kerberos authentication
2. Strong password
   
4. Multi-factor DBA authentication
1. Data Vault
2. Audit Vault - consolidate and monitor audit information
4. Availability
1. Protect against data loss
1. RMAN
2. Secure Backup
2. Protect against disk failure
1. ASM
3. Protect against server loss
1. RAC
4. Protect against human error
1. Flashback transaction
2. Total Recall
5. Protect against site failure
1. Data Guard
4. Ability to manage change
1. Real Application Testing

Over the coming weeks and months, I will give some overview of some of the features mentioned above, and what impacts they may have on the real world.

Oracle 11g - Innovate Faster

Last Wednesday, July 11th 2007, I attended the Oracle 11g Launch event in NYC. The main theme of the event was Innovation. I estimated about 1000 people were in attendance. The host was James Burke, author of "American Connections: The Founding Fathers. Networked." He had some interesting comments regarding Innovation and the evolution of data centers.

Next up was Oracle's President Charles Phillips. I have heard Mr. Phillips before, and really enjoy hearing him speak. Something I did not realize before, but this year is Oracle's 30th anniversary, and Charles had some stories and pictures from the founding team which were interesting and amusing.

Charles discussed the drivers of the development of 11g, and how closely Oracle worked with their customers on what features and improvements they wanted. Here are some if the challenges/drivers:

• Information is constantly changing
• There are more consumers of information now than ever before
• Users need real-time access to data
• An increase in security and compliance requirements
• Increasing quality of service at a lower cost
• Pressure to manage increasing rate of change

Mr. Phillips mentioned a few of the features in 11g that he thought were cool. They were:

• Advanced partitioning and compression - 2-3x compression with encryption
  
• Online upgrades and patching - also working on applications to be able to have the same ability)
• Real Application Testing - capture and replay functionality
• Data Guard - production mode can offload work to standby node
• Fast Files - fast access to unstructured media types stored in the database
  
• Total Recall - submit a query as of a certain date in the past
• RAC performance management

One of the comments (paraphrased here) by Charles about the Oracle 11g product was "...highest quality release of any product Oracle has shipped." There were also some quotes on the number of testing hours spent on the product and the number of tests performed. I really hope the product is a as strong out of the box as has been stated, but I will remain a cynic, and wait until I can get my hands on it (outside of the OAUG demos) to see if this truly is a stablke initial release.

Check out the some of the white papers on the Oracle 11g page on OTN for more details, and check here again soon for some more information from the launch event!

Oracle Configuration Support Manager

Oracle has recently simplified the Service Request submission process by using its updated version of the Configuration Support Manager (CSM); formerly known as ‘My Configurations and Projects’. CSM can be integrated with your existing Enterprise Manager solution, or as a standalone update to your existing technology stack installation.

CSM offers many benefits to simplify and speed the resolution of your supported configurations. Using CSM you can:

- Simplify RAC Support
- Proactively run HealthChecks and Product Alerts against complex configurations
- One-click access to Service Request status for specific configurations or projects
- Reduce the time it takes to submit a service request
- Secure, fast, and accurate information exchange between the customer’s environment and Oracle Support
- 100% visibility to key project milestones and owners across IT project portfolio
- Proactive Issue Notification
- CSM identifies & tailors critical security and general alerts associated with your configuration

No downtime is required to install. It is a completely separate entity from the Oracle technology stack.

Oracle Guest Account

I found this great discussion on the Oracle Guest account and thought I would share. Here is a link to the thread in Yahoo Groups.

Here is an excerpt from the post sent in by John Healy:

<-- Begin excerpt -->

You are no longer able to login as GUEST, even with the correct password, through the standard login screen.

I believe this was implemented in 11.5.10.2 (CU2), but possibly in 11.5.10.

There is however, a necessary back door which must remain into the system, which does let you login as GUEST.

Because of this "back door" it is mandatory that the GUEST user has No Responsibilities and that there is No Password expiration on the GUEST user.

The Lack of Responsibilities prevents the GUEST user from completing the Login.

A message will come up stating that the user has no valid responsibilities and return the user to the login screen.

The Requirement of No Password expiration on the GUEST user exists because;

If someone gets the GUEST password and attempts to login, they will get the password expiration screen and be requested to change the password.

If someone does this, No-One will be able to access the Jinitiator (GUI) forms in the system.

There is a complex process that allows the transition from the initial home page to Jinitiator (GUI) forms without the user having to login a second time.

This process requires the synchronization of the GUEST password with other files on the system.

This also means that No-One should Ever change the guest password without Very Careful coordination with the DBA.

The necessary files Must stay in sync with the internal GUEST password.

There may also be issues if the GUEST password is changed and patches are applied or an upgrade is done, and the same lockout may occur.

In a nutshell;

Don't change the GUEST password, as it is not necessary.

Simply Removing/Disabling all Responsibilities for GUEST prevents any successful login.

It is Dangerous to attempt to change the GUEST password without DBA coordination.

A mistake in this coordination will lockout all users from Jinitiator (GUI).

Patching and/or Upgrades may also Break Jinitiator (GUI) access so leave the default password.

Patching and/or Upgrades almost always require certain High Level accounts to be set back to their original defaults.

This is due to the fact that Oracle Can Not know your passwords, and the process needs to access the system through these high level accounts to perform the patch /upgrade process.

Oracle does not magically patch/upgrade your system but uses the tools available that you would use to perform the changes.

This is why either the upgrade changes the passwords, or the DBA is required to change them for successful patching/upgrades.

John Healy III
Corporate Oracle System Administrator
Carnival Corporation & plc


<-- End excerpt -->

New Domain

It is with great pleasure that I announce the we have finally acquired the infotegrity.com domain. Over the next few weeks, we will be migrating all of our servers and email addresses to this new domain. Our infotegirty.net domain will still be working, and we will forward any email for several months until we can phase out infotegrity.net email addresses. You can start using our new web site domain immediately, but please hold off on using the new email addresses until we can migrate our mail server.

Please check back soon for updates.

Collaborate07 - 4/19/2007

Congratulations to our final 2 winners of our hole-in-one contest:

Gloria Chandler - Cleveland Motion Controls

David Rusmisel - Wachovia Bank

We would like to thank all of you who stopped by and took a chance. We hope the stress balls will help ease the transition back to the office next week. Please visit our website for more exciting news and information.

Collaborate07 - 4/18/2007

Congratulations to the first 2 winners of our hole-in-one contest:

Cindy Fark - Arizona State University

Sanjay Jaiswal - Walgreens

We will be drawing 2 more winners this afternoon.

Collaborate07 - 4/17/2007

Greetings from day two of the Exhibitor Hall for Collaborate07 in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend Charles Phillips' keynote address yesterday evening as we were finalizing the setup of our Exhibit booth. This is one of the most international OAUG shows I have attended, and we met people from all around the globe, including some from as far away as New Zealand & Australia!

If you are attending, please stop by and visit us in Booth 268. We are giving away some stress balls as well as 4 Odyssey Golf putters, so come on in and register to win as soon as you can!

We look forwarding to meeting some more great people at the conference, and talking to you.

Collaborate07

Colloborate07 will be taking place April 15-19 at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. Please stop by our booth for some great giveaways and maybe win a prize!

We look forward to seeing you there!

Link

VMware Virtualization for Support and Infrastructure

I would like to talk a bit about how we use VMware technology to provide remote support for our clients. We provide remote Oracle database and E-business suite support for our clients, each of which provide a unique environment in which we need to work. With a wide range of VPN solutions being implemented by our clients, we needed to come up with an efficient and cost-effective solution to manage multiple VPN software clients on our laptops and PC's. We have found that by using VMware's solutions, we can minimize the amount of configurations and software needed on an employees machine, and save time and money in the process.

For each client, we create one or more virtual machines and install the necessary tools and applications to support their environment. Here is a breakdown of some of the software installed on each virtual machine:

- operating system (usually Windows XP)
- an Office Suite (MS Office or OpenOffice)
- ClamAV anti-virus software
- VMware tools
- Oracle SQL Developer
- VPN Client

We have several images or base installs configured that have most of the components listed above already installed. We also follow "VMware Server guest OS performance tips" to speed up performance of our Windows guests.

When a ticket is created by a client that requires an employee to check or fix an issue in the client's environment, he or she can connect directly to a VMware Server using the VMware Console and create a secure VPN connection from the virtual machine to the client that needs support. Since we use Windows XP guests, only one person can use each virtual machine at a time, so we may create several virtual machines for each client to allow more than one employee to connect to a client at a time.

For employees out of the office, they simply need to have our VPN client installed on their machine, connect to our internal network and then connect to the VMware Console and to the appropriate virtual machine to do their work. At times this can be a little slow, but so far we have found that this works well for most situations. For some clients that demand dedicated support, we do install VMware Player or VMware Workstation on some laptops to speed the support process up and enable us to better meet our service level agreements.

This environment also provides segregation and security for our clients, as each virtual machine can connect to only the client it is intended for and minimizes the risk of making a change to the wrong client environment. To connect to a client environment, the employee must log in to the VMware Console using a client specific id that ensures that they are conencting to the correct virtual machine.

We also use VMware Server to enable us to have multiple guest server OS's installed on a single physical server to mimic the various environments and products that we support. This allows us to better server our clients and allows ouor employees "sandboxes" to try out upgrades, patches and new software with minimal impact on our clients' resources.

Open Source Tools Part II - Bugzilla

This post will discuss our usage of Bugzilla for our issue/ticket tracking. Bugzilla was originally created to track software defects, but we have found that it is also very useful for tracking trouble tickets for our external support organization. We did have to make some modifications for it to fit our model, but it definitely works well for us. It has a great search capability, and reporting is straightforward and fairly robust.

It relies on a MySQL database to store the ticket information. It has security features that allow us to segregate our customers so they can only see the tickets that they report, and we can have different application sets for each client to ease assignments.

When we started using it a few years ago, there were not a lot of F/OSS tools that we found for issue tracking as there are today. We have considered moving to a program better suited for application support, as our upgrade path can be challenging due to some of our customizations, but for now we are happy with our system.

Items, notes, issues, ideas related to Lean Manufacturing principals.

What is Lean Manufacturing? It is a strategy of identifying and eliminating waste in the operations of an organization. It can be applied to most any organization that has defined and regular processes. For this discussion, we are focusing on manufacturing organizations.

Toyota is probably the largest manufacturing organization extensively employing Lean principles and techniques. TPS, the Toyota Production System is used as a model for many implementaions of Lean. Taiichi Ohno, an executive at Toyota is credited with developing tenets like '5s' and 'Seven Deadly wastes', or 'muda'. A lot of japanese terms like 'kaban' and 'kaizan' appear in Lean literature because of Toyota's pioneering efforts.

The Lean Enterprise Institute is a great reference site. Jim Womack a founder of the Lean Institute and Dan Roos coined the term 'Lean Production' in their book, The Machine that changed the World.

Open Source Tools Part 1 - email

Today's post is a follow up to last week's blog listing some fo the open-source tools we use here at Infotegrity. I will discuss how we use these tools for our corporate email solution.

We followed the Qmailrocks installation for the most part. We started with qmail for the MTA along with some patches for extended capabilities. While we do not have a very heavy workload, qmail has proven to be extremely reliable and has not stressed the server one bit.

Vpopmail and qmailadmin from Inter 7 are used for email domain and account management. They are easy tools to install and use, and allow our users some control over their mailboxes for forwarding and vacation messages as well as other adminstrative functions. Another administrative tool used is vqadmin, also from Inter 7, which adds additional domain and account controls. Vqadmin allows us to control what each account has access to, set user quotas and manage domain and site level parameters.

To allow employees acces to their email from anywhere, we installed Courier-IMAP/IMAPS and SquirrelMail. Courier-IMAP was fairly easy to set up with SSL and with courierpassd allows users to change their own email passwords from within SquirrelMail. SquirrelMail is a php based webmail application. It is quick and has some great plugins available to extend its core capabilities.

As everyone knows, the biggest challenges facing email administrators today are viruses and spam. We have employed several tools to fight the battle, but it is an uphill battle. ClamAV is used for anti-virus on the server and has become the standard on our desktops as well when the current anti-virus software expires. The virus database is updated daily and periodic scans help keep the system and emails clean. SpamAssassin does a pretty good job tagging and filtering most of our spam, but we are looking at other tools to aid in the fight. Both tools integrate into qmail via Qmail-Scanner which is a substitute queuing mechanism and allows other tools to be executed in the queuing process.

There is very little maintenance required with this installation, and using the Qmailrocks instructions made it fairly easy. This set-up allows to handle multiple mail domains and allows for us to even host mail service for others in the future. I would love to hear any comments or suggestions about what you are doing for your email solution.