MacLochlainns Weblog

This was a day with a busy schedule because of the publisher’s seminar. It’s where the authors, like me, learn about Oracle products and market focus. Andy Mendolsohn went over the Oracle Database 11g R2, and other VPs presented BI/ERP solutions and the effect of Oracle’s Essbase Plus (previously known as Hyperion), Java’s position and direction, Solaris’ position and direction, and the Fusion Applications. A summary of the highlights I noted follows:

• The Oracle Database 11g R2 presentation explained the idea of quarterly patch set updates (PSUs), advanced compression, the new Oracle Database Firewall, OCFS (Oracle Clustered File System), and the Exadata Server. Three quarterly PSUs, then a point release is a change but a welcome one.
• Advanced compression qualified three subgroups: (a) A 3 times compression for OLTP systems; (b) A 10 times compression for data warehousing, and (c) a 15 to 50 times compression for archive data. If we apply this with the capital cost figure of 40% for storage as valid, compression may substantially reduce costs.
• They shared Gartner statistics that 82% of Fortune 500 companies use Oracle BI/ERP solutions was very interesting. The idea that the largest customer deploys an Oracle BI/ERP solution to 1 million users turns the demarcation between traditional data warehouse explorers and farmers into a historical footnote. They positioned Oracle BI EE Plus as targeted to the development of dashboard and BI Publisher (formally XML Publisher). Oracle Essbase Plus for Model-OLAP (Online Analytical Processing – focused on resolving the discrepancies between R-OLAP (Relational-OLAP) and M-OLAP (Model-OLAP). Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management tools are reserved to planning Long-Range Objectivs (LROs), Short-Range Objectives (SROs), and Key Indicators (KPIs). The last requires a carefully modeling of the objective needs of the business and data model capability.
• The Exadata server now comes in two types, the X2-2 and X2-8. The first may be a quarter, half, or full Exadata server while the latter is always a full Exadata server. The X2- has 128 cores, 2 TB of memory, a Linux/Solaris 10 GB Ethernet connection, 14 storage servers with 6 core CPU in each storage server.
• Oracle’s commitment to Java is very solid but a question on NetBeans leaves one to believe that it isn’t part of Oracle’s solution space and it may not see much if any evolutionary change. They said that NetBeans would be supported to help external Open Source developers. My guess is that we should plan to migrate NetBeans or bear the cost of owning solutions with a higher integration cost.
• Solaris has come through the merger with new strength and a commitment to four goals that I caught: availability, scalability, and efficiency, and security. They also committed to make Solaris fully virtualizable, which will more effectively support private clouds. You may also note that Oracle has improved efficiency of MySQL 5.5 on the Solaris platform.
• Fusion Middleware Applications focus on: (a) Best Practice – leveraging the best in class of applications from the Oracle eBusiness Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel; (b) Re-inventing User Experience – A role-based user interface, embedded decision support, and pervasive collaboration; (c) Cloud – Support for both private and public clouds; (d) Platform – Standard-based, configurable, adaptive, and secure Fusion middleware. Customers will have three options for the future. They may continue the current path and upgrade eBusiness Suite to eBusiness Suite, et cetera. Alternatively, they can adopt a co-existence strategy that lets them mix and match components form multiple suites. Lastly, they may embrace the complete suite as a whole.

After the Publisher’s Seminar, we went to the Nikko for Oracle Develop. On the way, we had to cross Powell Street. I snapped a photo of John Harper, co-author of Oracle Database 11g Programming Workbook, with the Cable Car. The Nikko’s door is on the right, and the sessions were on the third floor.

After one session, we went back to the Moscone South Exhibition hall to snag a copy of Guy Harrison’s Oracle Performance Survival Guide: A Systematic Approach to Database Optimization. It’s the fresh version of his prior SQL Tuning books. I’d already bought one two months ago, but I couldn’t resist a signed copy for the office when it was free. I recommend the book as worthwhile and have promised Guy to write a review when I get home.

At the conclusion of the day, John and I went to the Oracle Press party to meet other authors. Ric Niemiec, founder of TUSC and author of Oracle Database 10g Performance Tuning: Tips and Techniques, and we took a photo. He’s also mentioned that the next edition covering Oracle Database 11g will include coverage of the Exadata Server. It’s awesome that he gets to write after the terminal release of the database.

I started the day at JavaOne. It’s at the Hilton on Mason Street. I attended a couple sessions on Java. Then, I went to the JavaDEMO Grounds to check things out rather than catch a sandwich.

There were a few interesting venues but I found the JBoss presentation the most useful on Seam 3. The presentation was worth the time, and the demonstration using the technology at the end was effective for a couple reasons. While the presenter’s environment wasn’t ready, he was able to fix it while working through his discussion of the technical stack. Also, the use of Seam 3 was first class. I’d recommend you stop by if you have a chance to see it.

After seeing the JavaDEMO Grounds, I went back to the Marriott to attend the Data Integration hands-on lab with Data Integrator and the Database Performance Diagnostics and Tuning presentations.

Afterward, a friend and I went to Moscone South to the Exhibition Hall. There we found the air hockey table and other game room. Only one here this year. We finished up by hitting the Moscone South Exhibition Hall. Saw some interesting hardware demos and that’s a wrap for Day 1 at Oracle Open World 2010. Actually, my second day because MySQL Sunday counts in my book.

I posted how to connect to an Oracle database from an XSLT library file back in August 2008. It’s an event driven XML approach that can support web page development. One of my students wanted to do the same thing against MySQL. He quickly saw that it was simply a matter of the switching the JDBC library. He’s got the whole idea bundled on his blog here.

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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  xmlns:sql="org.apache.xalan.lib.sql.XConnection"
  extension-element-prefixes="sql">
<xsl:output method="html" />
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:variable
  name="movies"
  select="sql:new('com.mysql.jdbc.Driver','jdbc:mysql:///storedb','student','student')" />
<xsl:variable name="streaming" select="sql:disableStreamingMode($movies)" />
<xsl:variable
  name="queryResults"
  select="sql:query($movies,'SELECT i.item_title, i.item_asin, i.item_release_date FROM storedb.item i')" />
<html>
<head><title>MySQL Result Set</title></head>
<body style="font-family: sans-serif;">
<table border="1" cellpadding="5">
  <tr>
    <xsl:for-each select="$queryResults/sql/metadata/column-header">
      <th><xsl:value-of select="@column-label" /></th>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </tr>
  <xsl:apply-templates select="$queryResults/sql/row-set/row" />
</table>
</body>
</html>
<xsl:value-of select="sql:close($movies)" />
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="row">
  <tr><xsl:apply-templates select="col" /></tr>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="col">
  <td><xsl:value-of select="text()" /></td>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Hope this helps those looking for a solution.

While helping in the forum, I noticed that folks don’t know that Java isn’t deployed with the Oracle 10g XE. However, it strikes me that you might be able to fudge it but I’m not sure that’s allowed in the EULA. If you want Java inside the database, why wouldn’t you install the licensed product?

There was an OTN article that listed three limitations but this wasn’t one in the article. Maybe I’ll run across the marketing note sometime in the furture or somebody will post the URL as a comment, which is always appreciated.

Anyway, the presence or lack of Java inside the database is pretty easy to test. You only need to do this:

SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production ON Thu Nov 26 21:19:42 2009
Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle.  ALL rights reserved.
 
Connected TO:
Oracle DATABASE 10g Express Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production
 
SQL> CREATE OR REPLACE AND RESOLVE JAVA SOURCE NAMED HelloWorldSQL AS
  2  public class HelloWorldSQL {
  3    public static String hello() {
  4      RETURN "Hello World."; }
  5  }
  6  /
CREATE OR REPLACE AND RESOLVE JAVA SOURCE NAMED HelloWorldSQL AS
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-29538: Java NOT installed

This is also true for Oracle Database 11g XE, as shown:

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.2.0 Production ON Fri DEC 9 02:34:20 2011
Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle.  ALL rights reserved.
 
Connected TO:
Oracle DATABASE 11g Express Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - 64bit Production
 
SQL> CREATE OR REPLACE AND RESOLVE JAVA SOURCE NAMED HelloWorldSQL AS
  2  public class HelloWorldSQL {
  3    public static String hello() {
  4    RETURN "Hello World!"; }
  5  }
  6  /
CREATE OR REPLACE AND RESOLVE JAVA SOURCE NAMED HelloWorldSQL AS
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-29538: Java NOT installed

It also explains the lack of loadjava or dropjava from the $ORACLE_HOME/bin directory.

I saw a post on the forum and fielded a question from my students on how you can write a database trigger that uses Java for the programming logic. I provided two approaches in this blog page. One lets Java raise the exception, which becomes an unhandled exception in SQL. The other implements the library as a function, and uses an IF statement to raise an exception – with RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR.

I’m partial to the second approach but think the Fusion middleware may yet present a better option in the future. You should take a peak at the oracle.dss.util.TypeNotSupportedException.