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Who says direct marketing doesn't work? A personal request to blog the upcoming ConFoo conference (25 February - 1 March 2013 in Montreal, Canada) has, as you can see, been successful. Although it's been a few years since I spoke there, I recall how impressive the organization was. The diversity and continual growth trajectory of the conference over the years is a very good indicator that you should be involved.

While you're there, say Hi to Oracle Ace Director Sheeri Cabral who is giving a couple of MySQL talks.

After not using the Nexus 7 for some weeks, i got the following screen:
No password worked... Switch off/on... same screen again.
How to get out of this loop?

1. Switch the device off (press and hold power button)
2. Press and hold all three buttons. You will see the following:
   
3. Use the volume buttons to navigate to Recover Mode
   
4. Press the power button the confirm
   Now you will see the Android with a red triangle
   
5. Now while holding the power button, press volume up
6. Use the volume keys to navigate to wipe data/factory reset
   
7. Press power button to select this option
8. Go to Yes, erase all user data and press power button
   

And the "Type password to decrypt storage"-screen is gone... (and all data, too ;-)
[The official documentation can be found here.]

Yesterday I encountered a code snippet which taught me something I did not think was possible. But it is, as I'll show in this blogpost. It's not spectacular in any way, just convenient at most. When you need a function or procedure to retrieve some value, you'll start examining the existing code base if a function already exists that does the job. Probably you won't find an exact match, but Rob van Wijkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499478359372903250noreply@blogger.com2

The latest release value proposition has just been published for the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub (formerly Applications Portal).  As you may know, we've moved this product to the Revision release model to bring updates and enhancements to our customers on a more timely basis.  This also enbles us to align our Interaction Hub releases with the latest PeopleTools capabilities.

This RVP covers Release 9.1/Revision 2, and covers the following main features:

• Rebranding and new Restricted Use License
• New Style Sheet adoption
• Red Paper facilitating Single Sign-on between the Hub and PeopleSoft Applications
• Other User Experience enhancements

In particular, customers will find great value in the new Global Search used in the Hub. This enables a more search-centric navigation paradigm by allowing end users to access content via searches executed in Interaction Hub across all PeopleSoft applications.

The red paper will be welcomed by administrators charged with installing and setting up their Interaction Hub with their PeopleSoft applications.

The paper can be downloaded from My Oracle Support here.  (requires login)

Want to learn how to connect multiple BI clients such as SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, Cognos and Microsoft Excel to Oracle OLAP, quickly and easily, using the XMLA version of the MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP?  Check out the Oracle webcast on February 5 at 9:00 AM PST.

You will see how it works and how customers in different industries are using this solution.

Just sign up here and join us on February 5th.

Evènement majeur de l'année 2013 ... réservez votre journée du 11 avril prochain !!!!!

SAP BO and DS with Oracle Database Part 6 Installing DS Client

I downloaded the "SBOP DATA SERVICES DESIGNER 4.0 WITH SP03 WINDOWS (64B)" and used the generic trial licenses for the installation.


 























Using the installed tool access the designer and it would prompt to enter the administrator password.



now we have the console ready for deploying jobs. Wait the jobserver is still not connected to the repository and it had a red cross over the icon which is at the lower right corner. 
The fix took may be a week for me to figure out in the SAP world. It is unlike Oracle world where most of the bug fixes are open and available on the internet. SAP world is still not open based on my 10 years of experience but this is only my view. But still I solved it and I will blog about it later.

SAP BO and DS with Oracle Database Part 5 Verifying CMC and DS

Now that we are done with the installation , we have to verify CMC and DS information.

Access CMC and make sure you are able to login via the administrative user

URL : http://bodsserver001:8080/BOE/CMC


Access Data Services option to see if the repository is active


Edit the repository and confirm if you can connect using the Test Connection button.

Access the Data Services console to see if you can see the repository and the rest of the components.
URL : http://bodsserver001:8080/DataServices

SAP BO and DS with Oracle Database Part 4 Installing DS on SUSE Linux

Now that we are doing with installing BO , I wanted to create the DS environment so that we have a complete setup before we go into the rest of the experiments.

I downloaded "SBOP DATA SERVICES 4.0 WITH SP03 LINUX (64B)" and used the generic trial licenses for implementation.

After downloading unzip the files in Windows and then ftp into the linux server.

Set environment variables relevant for the installation
$ export LANG=en_US.utf8
$ export LC_ALL=en_US.utf8
$ export ORACLE_HOME=..../client/
$ PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin

Now create a directory to store the installation files.

$ mkdir -p /oraapp/bo/bo4
$ sh setup.sh InstallDir=/oraapp/bo/bo4

Now Choose the Installation language


Make sure that you select the BO installation folder. Initially I created another directory /bo/ds4 and installed  the complete package and nothing happened. So the recommendation is to install DS into BO folder.

 Check the prerequisite , which is fine


accept the trial license





input the trial license key , this will expire in 30 days


Choose option to install data services with cms server , so that it can be controlled via the cms console.


Update the administrative password

select the product which has to be installed , you can custom install after expanding and selecting components which is required.


if there is already running data services configuration than that can be reused here but I have skipped it because of the new install


I am selecting the option to use the existing installed database. remember I created the user in the BO installation procedure.


select Oracle , pay attention if you have Oracle RAC (soon we will see HANA here )


give the details of the oracle environment


create the repository


now configure a new job server to process your jobs , this can be done later with the client tool.


I choose to configure the job server and now I gave new name and a port for the job server to listen


Configure access server here


ports and other inputs has to mentioned


start the installation


it starts


it started


it runs


it finished soon ( no i did not know how long it took , I started the installation in the evening and the next day I saw it got finished )


Now we have BO and DS running. Lets play a bit more with the other options.

If you'd like to find out how you can develop applications for the multi-device, multi-platform world of today with PL/SQL, you are invited to our event at the ITU Technopark on January 31st.

Click here to view the day's program and register.

SAP BO and DS with Oracle Database Part 3 Installing BO on SUSE Linux

I downloaded "SBOP BI PLATFORM 4.0 SP04 (incl. FP03) SERVER LNX" and used the generic trial licenses for the implementation.

After downloading unzip the files in Windows and then ftp into the linux server.

Set environment variables relevant for the installation
$ export LANG=en_US.utf8
$ export LC_ALL=en_US.utf8
$ export ORACLE_HOME=..../client/
$ PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin

Now create a directory to store the installation files.

$ mkdir -p /oraapp/bo/bo4
$ sh setup.sh InstallDir=/oraapp/bo/bo4

Now Choose the Installation language


Select the destination folder


Now the prerequisite check  will be done , seems all is fine.


Accept the license agreement

Input the trial key (in my case)


Choose the application language , pay attention if you are deploying BO in the European world as you may have to select mostly all the languages.


Choose the install option


then the install type (here custom installation can be done with option 2) , I choose Full (:-


Choosing the database , here we already have running Oracle Database so option 2


Select Oracle for the CMS repository


Select Oracle for the Audit repository


I used Tomcat application server and there is a possibility to use a wide range of application server. One such is Weblogic which I will try out in a separate installation.


I opt to use the default version management system.


Configure the Server Intelligence Agent which is very helpful when it comes to managing BO components.


Configure the CMS port for the administrative console


Supply the password for the administrator accounts.


Here we have to give the Oracle TNS Name (this should be the name service name that we have mentioned in the tnsnames.ora of the Oracle Client Installation , to create the file source Oracle Home and run netca )

Login into the repository Oracle database and create the below two users.

SQL > grant connect,resource to boecms identified by boecms; (CMS Database User Name)
SQL > grant connect,resource to boeaud identified by boeaud; (Audit Database User Name)




Supply the port number for Tomcat application server


Configure the HTTP listening port


Configure the version management port and administrative password


I do not want to configure SDM agent at this moment so I skip it


I do not want to configure IEM at this moment so I skip it.


Give the confirmation for the installation to start


here we go


go it went to 8% and I can have coffee


now I am going to have lunch will be back and check the status


lunch break is over but still ??? my server is less powerful *may be*


common ....


tea break


good


very good


 Now SAP BO 4.0 SP4 is installed and there is something for me to play this evening.

Next

SAP BO and DS with Oracle Database Part 4 Installing DS on SUSE Linux

SAP BO and DS with Oracle Database Part 2 Installing Oracle Client
BO - Business Objects DS - Data Services
Before starting to install BODS we have install the Oracle Client Software on the machine where BO and DS are going to be installed. Since my implementation was on SUSE Linux I downloaded Oracle Client for Linux and installed it.
The below screenshots will give a overview of the installation process.







With this we are done with the Oracle Client Installation that is required for BO DS Installation.

Next

SAP BO and DS with Oracle Database Part 3 Installing BO on SUSE Linux

SAP BO and DS with Oracle Database Part 1 Installing Oracle Database

BO - Business Objects
DS - Data Services

Every body should be aware of the need to store data on to a database. But when it comes to choosing the database it is always Oracle who wins at Corporate Companies. I have made a BO and DS implementation with Oracle Database running at the back end.

To start with the BO and DS implementation first a database has to be installed. I choose HP Itanium server for the database and SUSE 11 for the BO Server. There are very less implementation of SAP BO and DS on linux environment so I decided to work with linux platforms instead of Windows.

Installing Oracle Database

This is the fun part and I am not going into detailed level as there are many references where the installation are covered. After installing the Oracle home invoke DBCA and install a health database for the repository. Additional databases has to be installed for all the necessary supporting objects , example a data warehouse database.

Next
SAP BO and DS with Oracle Database Part 2 Installing Oracle Client

At the Building Great-looking Usable Apps workshop, Misha Vaughan explained how observing even little things makes for building a great application user experience (UX): sticky notes*, for example. I caught up with the flame-haired Texan Applications UX messaging maven at home to find out about her successful UX outreach programs to the Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) community and what makes her tick as a UX mensch.

Misha Vaughan teaching apps developers about building a great UI at the UK workshop (photo: Ultan O’Broin) 

Ultan O’Broin: You see sticky notes on a screen. A UX “crime scene” or “opportunity?”

Misha Vaughan: An "Aha!" UX opportunity! Applications users rely on a support infrastructure to do their jobs. The sticky notes tell me there’s something missing from that system. That’s why it’s important to watch users at work. You see everything workers do in context: the extra little inputs they make, switching into email, chatting with colleagues, the real interruptions, what happens when workers are at the close of a transaction, and what “you’re done” means. This aspect really informs the user experience. It can’t be captured in a service request.

Sticky notes: Still holding their own (Photos and Polar opinion poll: Ultan O’Broin)

UO: Developers value what Grant Ronald of ADF calls “Feng Shui of UX” anecdotes. How do sticky notes inform the Fusion UX?

MV: Simple things like sticky notes offer a good example of why UX doesn't stop at the UI. When we observed real users at work, we saw a common phenomenon: sticky notes on computer monitors whose job it was to remember. To remember an account number that had to be passed from one system to another, to remember a procurement item that needed to be tracked, to remember a budget code, and so on. What users wanted was a way to pass this kind of context from one part of their system to another. 

Oracle Fusion Middleware (FMW) enabled the kinds of contextual UX that we wanted users to have in Oracle Fusion Applications. Those accounts, items, budgets, and the context of what users are doing with those objects gets passed by Fusion middleware sensors into Oracle Metadata Services (MDS). Users can now easily search for and tag items, monitor budgets, manage account exceptions, track progress, and see and share information about their transaction easily. 

What’s next for sticky notes and UX? How about light overlays? (Lamps Sketch 06: Interfaces on Things video)

UO: Context seems central to UX. So “context over consistency” as 37 Signals would say?

MV: What may make sense here may not make sense there. Consistency has a place in UX, but it can be the enemy of productivity. Each experience must be contextual: for that user, their device, and their task. Enforcing a common UX means context becomes impossible. Think about how task flows are different for the mobile or desktop user, the difference in the UI when using amazon.com on a smart phone or PC, the responsive web design approach.

UO: How do you get the Apps UX messaging right? For example, squaring a noob ADF developer’s needs with those of a senior solution consultant?

MV: We learned the hard way (laughs). Know your users! We usability test our messages. UX can be too academic, so we stepped back. We communicate in plain language, making no assumptions about what the audience needs to know. Then we deliver our message in non-UX technical language through events and experiences that get to the heart of solving the real problems faced by the audience.

UO: What usability inspires you personally in your work and personal life?

MV: The stuff designed for kids. If they can use it, then it’s simple; it’s straightforward. Look at kids’ games and how they learn to use them. Somebody who cannot read is not going to look up a manual. I love the iPad games for my five- and seven-year-olds. Seniors, too. My mom can reboot an Apple router now just by plugging it in and out. She doesn’t know she’s “rebooting.” So, make it easy, transparent.

UO: You told me that you read Computers as Theatre. How did this influence you?

MV: I read Brenda Laurel’s book for my dissertation. The Internet is full of information. It’s a whole wellspring of genres. It was interesting to me how people didn't think of the Internet as “work” and how this informed their computer expectations. Today we can see that work and personal genres are blurred: games, consumerization, content, information, and entertainment are fused together.

UO: Developers really love Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think approach to common sense usability. But can anyone be a UX champ? How can they start?

MV: IT implementers and developers don’t have the money or time to be UX pros, but they can still do it! I’m inspired by one IT manager we know from the City of Las Vegas, a UX evangelist there. He showed the way: Sit and observe your users. Take a piece of paper and pencil. Ask: “Show me how you start?” Don’t begin with what they do on-screen, start with that pile of papers on their desks or that incoming email. Then ask: “Tell me what do you next?” Explore further with “tell me more about that” and keep saying it until you get to the “you’re done” bit. Ask: “How do you know you’re done?” Tremendous insight.

You have to follow those user conversations thoroughly. Back to your sticky notes. Don’t start with the notes themselves, but find out what happens when users get the first message to act. Do they Google it? Look up the sender in LinkedIn? What’s the path of people, and how do they connect to each other? What’s a full day of work really like? What are the bits? Then design to enable users to work, not click, better.

UO: On to real user experiences. Austin or San Francisco: which has the best food?

MV: Austin! The cheapest, the best chefs. I’ll challenge anyone on that. The best burritos by far!

UO: Diversity in technology is a hot developer topic: Any thoughts on attracting wider audiences into the UX ecosystem? Women? Seniors?

MV: Start early, in school. Teach coding expertise in simple, meaningful ways. Move the Turtle Programming for Kids on the iPad, for example. Teach with Legos. Use games. Definitely, it’s about teaching fundamental programming skills to the community.

UO: OK, then, crystal ball time: Your top three UX trends for 2013?

MV: I see:

One, continued gamification, simplification, and BYOD. Take FUSE (the New Face of Fusion Applications) for example, an immersive, cross-devices concept taking in all those things. Enterprises have to embrace these things and really they need it for retention of staff, productive employees, and other business benefits.

Two, new emerging device paradigms gaining traction. Look at the adoption of contextual natural language voice avatars in the enterprise, Google Glass, the work as entertainment trend, too.

Three, cheaper RFID, GPS technology, and so on, enabled through device features and hot-pluggable middleware, that passes context across apps will start to solve real enterprise problems. Just watch this space!

UO: Finally, what’s your “call to action” for ADF and FMW developers to get on board the Misha UX train?

MV: Stay connected! Here’s how:

• Check out the Usable Apps website and VoX blog for events and information.
• Read the Top Ten Things You Need to Read if You’re a Fusion Apps Developer by Tim Dubois. 
• Keep up with the outreach on the ADF EMG community and on the Fusion Applications Developer Relations blog launched by Richard Bingham.

And keep coming back here. There’s some real cool stuff comin’ your way! 

* Sticky Note is a registered trademark of Société Bic.  

With Oracle 11.2 it is now possible to select directly from the alert and listener logs.

This is quite useful if a DBA is logged into the database, but not the server, and wants to monitor logs.

# Selecting from the Alert log :-


SQL> select ORIGINATING_TIMESTAMP, MESSAGE_TEXTfrom V$DIAG_ALERT_EXTWHERE ORIGINATING_TIMESTAMP > sysdate -1/24and trim(COMPONENT_ID)='rdbms'; 
ORIGINATING_TIMESTAMP-----------------------------------------------------------------MESSAGE_TEXT-----------------------------------------------------------------29-JAN-13 12.19.40.633000000 PM +09:00create tablespace HR_AUDIT
29-JAN-13 12.19.42.037000000 PM +09:00Completed: create tablespace HR_AUDIT

# Selecting from the Listener log :-


SQL> select ORIGINATING_TIMESTAMP,MESSAGE_TEXT
from V$DIAG_ALERT_EXT
WHERE ORIGINATING_TIMESTAMP > sysdate -1/240
and trim(COMPONENT_ID)='tnslsnr';  

ORIGINATING_TIMESTAMP
-----------------------------------------------------------------
MESSAGE_TEXT
-----------------------------------------------------------------
29-JAN-13 12.20.22.866000000 PM +09:00
29-JAN-2013 12:20:22 * (CONNECT_DATA=(SID=test)(CID=(PROGRAM=perl)(HOST=rac1.tes
t.com)(USER=oracle))) * (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=192.168.1.204)(PORT=15961))
 * establish * test * 0

29-JAN-13 12.20.23.540000000 PM +09:00
29-JAN-2013 12:20:23 * (CONNECT_DATA=(SID=test)(CID=(PROGRAM=perl)(HOST=rac1.tes
t.com)(USER=oracle))) * (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=192.168.1.204)(PORT=15962))
 * establish * test * 0

In typical debates, the extremists on both sides are wrong. “SQL vs. NoSQL” is an example of that rule. For many traditional categories of database or application, it is reasonable to say:

• Relational databases are usually still a good default assumption …
• … but increasingly often, the default should be overridden with a more useful alternative.

Reasons to abandon SQL in any given area usually start:

• Creating a traditional relational schema is possible …
• … but it’s tedious or difficult …
• … especially since schema design is supposed to be done before you start coding.

Some would further say that NoSQL is cheaper, scales better, is cooler or whatever, but given the range of NewSQL alternatives, those claims are often overstated.

Sectors where these reasons kick in include but are not limited to:

• Retailing, especially online. Different kinds of products have different kinds of attributes, making a Grand Cosmic Schema rather complex. Examples I’ve blogged about include:
  • Amazon relied on an in-memory object-oriented DBMS for its used books inventory lookup back in 2005.
  • A Microsoft customer managed book and DVD inventory in XML the same year.
  • More recently, 10gen spoke of a wireless telco offering cell phones and service plans in the same product catalog, built over MongoDB.
• Human resources. Employee-centric applications are naturally full of hierarchies, which can be annoying to flatten. Non-relational approaches I’ve blogged about include Workday’s object model and Neo4j’s graph-based contribution.
• Web log analysis. Web logs can be particularly hard to flatten, as per my post on (that sense of) nested data structures.
• More generally, marketing and other applications that maintain detailed profiles of customers or prospects. The information in these profiles is often based on a large variety of marketing campaigns, third-party databases, and analytic exercises. As the inputs pile up, the schemas get ever hairier.
• Electronic medical records. Medical records are one area where non-relational approaches may actually have majority share. I blogged about one example in 2008.

Or to quote a 2008 post,

Conor O’Mahony, marketing manager for IBM’s DB2 pureXML, talks a lot about one of my favorite hobbyhorses — schema flexibility* — as a reason to use an XML data model. In a number of industries he sees use cases based around ongoing change in the information being managed:

• Tax authorities change their rules and forms every year, but don’t want to do total rewrites of their electronic submission and processing software.
• The financial services industry keeps inventing new products, which don’t just have different terms and conditions, but may also have different kinds of terms and conditions.
• The same, to some extent, goes for the travel industry, which also keeps adding different kinds of offers and destinations.
• The energy industry keeps adding new kinds of highly complex equipment it has to manage.

Conor also thinks market evidence shows that XML’s schema flexibility is important for data interchange. For example, hospitals (especially in the US) have disparate medical records and billing systems, which can make information interchange a chore.

*I now call that dynamic schemas.

So, for fear of Frankenschemas, should we flee from RDBMS altogether? Hardly. For social proof, please note:

• Every application area I’ve cited can be and often is handled via relational techniques.
• Some of the non-relational alternatives I’ve mentioned, such as XML or object-oriented DBMS, haven’t enjoyed a lot of traction.
• Even the most successful NoSQL vendors are tiny when compared to the relational behemoths.

More conceptually, I’d say that the advantages of a relational DBMS start:

• In theory and practice alike, the advantages of normalization and joins.
• In theory and practice alike, the advantages of loose coupling between your database design and your application. (I think that’s a cleaner way of saying it than to focus on “reusing” the database, but it amounts to the same thing.)
• In practice, performance and functionality in anything using indexes, even if joins aren’t involved.
• In practice, maturity and functionality in general.

Those aren’t chopped liver.

I work in a small team. There are just five of us at the 'coalface' for the application, responsible for both development and production. One of the five acts as the 'DBA/Sysadmin' (as well as doing programming and acting team as leader when the actual team leader is on leave and filling in a couple of other roles). And he was on leave on Friday when we got the plaintive email with the subject "The application is broken".

We could log in and out, so it wasn't 'catastrophic'. The application is mostly APEX, so my next step was to check the Apex activity log where I saw "ORA-01652: unable to extend temp segment by 128 in tablespace TEMP". The error was at least 'extreme'. 

Yes, a DBA probably would have gone to the alert.log first. I am not a DBA :)

Prompted by that message, I ran a query across V$TEMPSEG_USAGE to find several inactive sessions under APEX_PUBLIC_USER holding hundreds of MBs of temporary LOB segments. With a temp tablespace around 2GB, this level of usage isn't sustainable. The quick solution was just to shoot the sessions. 

APEX lies on top of HTTP, a stateless protocol and the session state is actually preserved in tables (check out Scott Wesley's post on viewing Apex session state). It generally isn't a problem if you kill one of the database sessions forming the connection pool and it isn't active.

On further investigation, we have identified one trouble spot, which is an application component that allows users to upload and download files. It seems that recently they have been doing large files (hundreds of MB). When the files are uploaded or download it allocates a temporary LOG segment and it holds onto the segment even after a commit or a DBMS_LOB.FREETEMPORARY or a reset package state. 

Those end users aren't getting the same database session each time oo if they do several file transfers, multiple sessions can be hanging onto these hundreds of MB of temporary segments. With around 20 sessions at peak, that was locking up our 2GB temp file.

As a stop-gap, we've introduced a scheduled job every three hours to kill off greedy sessions. It is an ugly solution though, and we'll be discussing options when we're all back at work after the long weekend. These include

• A support note that points to event 60025 to free up the stray LOB segments. 
• Tying the file upload/download component to one or two database sessions
• File size limits on uploads and downloads
• Is Apex the appropriate security gate-keeper to those fils
• Can we avoid dealing with the 'entire' file, and just have a few MBs at a time

If you have any other suggestions, feel free to add a comment.

In the pub after the Sydney Oracle Meetup ('SQL Developer for DBAs, featuring a guest recorded appearance by the one and only +Jeff Smith ), Google+ got a mention. Okay, it was me who mentioned it, and it was closely followed by a remark by another attendee that he didn't know anyone else who used it.

It is getting some traction, apparently overtaking Twitter in active members ( I don't know how the figures are calculated. Twitter is more high profile still, possibly because practically every tweet is public).

Google+... grew in terms of active usage by 27% to 343m users to become the number 2 social platform. Interestingly for Google, YouTube (not previously tracked by us as a social platform) comes in at number 3....

But it is still a geeky place. The most popular communities are Space, Android and Photography. Photography is big in G+. Sport less so, with the Minecraft community being bigger than the 'F1 Racing' group (which is the biggest of any sport).

Google+ Tips and Suggestions

If you do want to get active in G+, finding appropriate communities is a good start.

Try Science Sunday or IT Professionals for active groups, or find something aligned to your non-work interests. There's no busy Oracle community yet. If you are an Oracle person, feel free to join the Sydney Oracle community (even if you don't live around here).

If you want a selected set of individuals to start with, I've shared a circle here. Some of them (Laurence Pegard and Artsaholic) are 'visual' posters with lots of imagery. Wired, The Economist and the Daily WTF will be known to anyone reading this. Frankly the comments on the Economist posts often fall into the drivel category.Tim Hall and Jeff Smith are included because they are the bigger Oracle 'identities'. David Brin is the sci-fi author, and the others represent good originators or curators of content.

I have one circle that is empty. I share articles to that if I want to read them later.

I have a circle for 'local' content (where it will be active during the daytime in Australia) and another for 'Following' a group of people who post stuff that I don't want to miss. I catch up on that group in the mornings (mostly) simply reading back to the last post I remember.

I have a 'Background' circle of stuff that I can read if I have time, but I can skip when bust. And I sometimes have 'potential' circles where I've imported a bunch of people and want to filter them into a better circle, or remove them altogether,

I generally remove (uncircle) people for posting lots of cat pictures or memes, or if they have a very high noise to signal ratio. I block people who irritate me. It makes life more pleasant.

If you comment on an article, you get notifications for subsequent comments (unless you mute the post). If you follow interesting people, you can often find other interesting people when they comment on interesting posts.

I don't expect people I follow to follow me back. I don't expect to find people I know in real-life.
Lots of people don't post publically. Mostly women, and mostly because of creeps. Because of this, you might need to wait until you are circled by them before you actually see any content from them.

Also, stick enough information in your profile so that people know 'what you are about'.

Creating the Custom Key Stores
./keytool -genkeypair -keyalg RSA -alias orakey -keypass welcome1 -keystore /d01/app/shared/admin/mycompany_domain/aserver/mycompany_domain/config/fmwconfig/mycompany-keystore.jks -storepass welcome1 -validity 3600

Assumption:
Custom Keystore for SOA-PROD:
/d01/app/shared/admin/mycompany_domain/aserver/mycompany_domain/config/fmwconfig/credMapKeystore.jks -storepass welcome1

ThirdCompany Certificate at:
/d01/app/shared/admin/mycompany_domain/aserver/mycompany_domain/config/fmwconfig/bsa.ThirdCompany.crt
/d01/app/oracle/product/fmw/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/bsa.ThirdCompany.crt

Importing ThirdCompany certificate for my Project:
cd /d01/app/oracle/product/fmw/wlserver_10.3
source /d01/app/oracle/product/fmw/wlserver_10.3/server/bin/setWLSEnv.sh

 cd /d01/app/shared/admin/mycompany_domain/aserver/mycompany_domain/config/fmwconfig/
 keytool -import -alias bsa.ThirdCompany -file bsa.ThirdCompany.crt -keystore /d01/app/shared/admin/mycompany_domain/aserver/mycompany_domain/config/fmwconfig/credMapKeystore.jks -storepass welcome1 -trustcacerts
 keytool -list -keystore /d01/app/shared/admin/mycompany_domain/aserver/mycompany_domain/config/fmwconfig/credMapKeystore.jks -storepass welcome1


Verify Custom Keystore Location for SOA Domain
1) EM->Weblogic->SOA_Domain->Security Provider ->Keystore
For each server (Admin + MS) we have to change the KeyStore configuration.
So for each server go to: Configuration -> Keystores
/d01/app/shared/admin/mycompany_domain/aserver/mycompany_domain/config/fmwconfig/credMapKeystore.jks

Verify Custom Keystore Location for SOA Infra

2) Click SOA -> right-click soa-infra
Select SOA Administration -> Common Properties
Click More SOA Infra Advanced Properties->KeyStore:
/d01/app/shared/admin/mycompany_domain/aserver/mycompany_domain/config/fmwconfig/credMapKeystore.jks


Unset SSL Keystore from setDomainEnv:
 vi /d01/app/shared/admin/mycompany_domain/aserver/mycompany_domain/bin/setDomainEnv.sh


Incase If we are using DemoTrust: Import the same ThirdCompany certificate:
keytool -list -keystore /d01/app/oracle/product/fmw/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/DemoTrust.jks -storepass DemoTrustKeyStorePassPhrase
keytool -import -alias bsa.ThirdCompany -file bsa.ThirdCompany.crt -keystore /d01/app/oracle/product/fmw/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/DemoTrust.jks -storepass DemoTrustKeyStorePassPhrase -trustcacerts

So the cats out of the bag and Oracle has finally announced that Jan 31st ODA 2.5 will be available. The ODA 2.5 is a pretty significant update to the ODA Platform. it will have 1. Virtualization as an option with OVM 3.1.1 2. Official External ASR management. So The virtualization is huge since it allows for using the capacity of the ODA for things other than the Database. The concept is a DOM0 and an ODA_BASE which is a privileged domain that ensures that The Database Appliance performs optimally. Intially the DOMU or user Domain will not have access to ASM Disks or ACFS mounts but that is something that will show up in a future release . The User Domain will not be patched as part of the Single Patching technique which mean if you go with virtualization the user domain needs to be patched independently. Also initially only 250GB extra slice is the only space available for the DOM0 and DOMU areas. This can bring in a little more complexity but from a DR perspective it helps in building idle capacity with a smaller footprint . The question that is important is should ODA deployments start with a Virtual deployment even though there might be no requirement for it initially. Oracle will ship the physical deployment and customers can bare metal it to be virtualized. Oracle Claims to be able to provide virtualization with ease of use but only time will tell. I am pretty excited about this since i can build virtualized boxes and do DR at a cheaper cost but the same horse power that i need. I do intend to test this and see how the ease of use to determine if that is my goign in stance for all new ODA deployments . Update: The Database Appliance has 500GB of Local Disk space which means DOM0 and DOMU will have access to 250GB and ODA_BASE will have 250GB available to it.