Infosys-Oracle Blog

Guest post by
Shweta Dhal, Consultant, Infosys

The Human Resources (HR) function has morphed into a more strategic function over the past decade. This transition has caused HR to take on a more inclusive role as business partners supporting the people aspects of what makes up a business. To continue this evolution, Human Capital Management (HCM) departments need effective information technology solutions supportive of optimized global HCM processes, and the decision making tools which can provide better insight to solve HCM -related business problems.

Oracle Fusion HCM gives a new dimension to the Human Resource practice globally by leveraging features of the next generation ERP like Web 2.0, open standards based solution, rich user experience  etc. It incorporates the best of breed solutions, thus reinventing the Human Resource function as a whole. The current release of Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management, 11g Release1 comes with offerings which are well integrated to give customers better insight and a holistic view of the Human Resource function, effectively aiding both strategic and day-to-day Human Resource activities.

Oracle Fusion Applications HCM 11g Release1 module footprint:

• Global Human Resources
• Global Payroll
• Goal Management
• Network at Work
• Performance Management
• Talent Review
• Benefits Management
• Workforce Compensation
• Workforce Directory Management
• Workforce Lifecycle Manager
• Workforce Predictions
• Transactional Business Intelligence

Industry Trends

Below,  I highlight few key drivers and trends which have significant impact on Human Resource function and how Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management is aligned to cater to these trends.

• Enhance Workforce Effectiveness
  In today's fast paced business environment time plays a critical role. Reducing the time taken to complete transactional HR work and concentrating on more strategic Human Resource aspects of business is an area which organizations are looking forward to incorporate.
• Use of Workforce Analytics to Support Decision Making
  The need to use metrics to effectively measure and manage an organization's workforce is one of the top priorities for business. Workforce related analytics plays a key role to increase workforce productivity and become more proactive in dealing with issues that can plague day to day functioning of the organization.
• Integrated Talent Management
  Managing workforce talent in a way which increases organizational level productivity needs automated, transparent, collaborative and proactive ways to manage the workforce through a robust, integrated system. HR strategic decisions cannot be isolated and need to be in tandem with each other to achieve business results.
• Leverage a 21st Century, next-generation Human Capital Management system
  Organizations are experiencing that, as their businesses have matured, the processes and systems used to support the business have also grown in complexity. Over a period of time, the cost of infrastructure and staff needed to maintain these processes and systems have also escalated.  In light of this, there is a fast-growing approach to move to a 21st century Human Capital Management system which is available in multiple Deployment Models.

In this blog, I have provided an overview of Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management application and briefly discussed the recent Human Resource industry trends. These trends can be very well addressed by Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management Applications. Thus, in Part-2 of the blog, we will provide our Point of View regarding how Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management and its capabilities cater to the recent Human Resource trends.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Analytics as we know is all about gaining insights from data to aid effective decision making. However, the vision of delivering fast, interactive, insightful analytics has eluded most of large Enterprises.

Time pressures, ever changing requirements, business funding have traditionally been bottlenecks in this vision, however the major challenges come from fact that most of the analytical solutions require different vendor hardware, software, storage and networking integrations. The ever increasing data volumes, the types of information assets and the channels in today's enterprises are posing serious challenges for Databases and Business Intelligence systems to handle. While this is a reality, another key aspect is the business user's increasing demand to have analysis, insights into this large volume almost instantaneously. The problem can't only be addressed by adding faster microprocessor chips, hardware as the challenge lies in the data storage, its retrieval & processing.

Oracle Open World Conference, on Oct 2nd will be marked as a key date in history as Oracle put up it's strong foot on the Big Data and In-Memory solution space to take up SAP's HANA, and other smaller players in the Big Data space. This day Larry Ellision unveiled Oracle's Exalytics Intelligence machine. The launch was preceeded by an overview of the series of Oracle's line of systems that combine hardware, software, networking and storage stacks.

First in the Exa-family came the Exadata a finely tuned Database appliance machine to ensure your Database is synchronized with hardware and tuned for perfection. Next in line was to onboard the applications and remove the performance bottlenecks with applications, and there came the Exalogic (Weblogic platform for hosting the applications) again fine tuned for performance of applications with the hardware bundling. The key to this entire series is a strategy to have highest performance for the lowest cost, as Ellison puts quoted "For a given task, it will cost you less on an Exadata than it would on a plain old commodity server." And the brain behind this strategy was to "Parallel Everything". According to Ellision "These machines should never fail, ever fail. Hardware breaks, software breaks too, but having a parallel architectures your should be tolrent to those failures". With Exalogic the Java based applications are 10-times faster, and allows for serving more users at the same time.

Finally the 3rd addition in Exa-family was to have an Analytical solution that handles both Big data challanges and in-Memory to provide "Speed of Thought" analytical responses. And here we are with a power packed solution having following:
1. 4x10 Core Intel Xiom CPUs (40 Core Processors)
2. 1 TB of DRAM, additionally can hold 5-10TB of data in memory due to compression techniques
3. Advanced Visualization and Exploration, BI foundation with additional capabilities for Mobile BI enablement
4. Optimized Infiniband connectivity to Exadata and Exalogic - to leverage your investments in Exadata and Exalogic
5. Columnar compression techniques - allows for storing more data in memory, with no network latency and disk I/O
6. Provides fastest performance for relational and MOLAP business intelligence applications, EPM and large scale mobile BI applications
7. Oracle's TimesTen in-memory database optimized for BI

Two keywords sum up the Exalytics solution "Speed of Thought Analytics" and "Desktop-like Experience".

What lies in future on those lines - Potentially a "Big Data Appliance" that may include Hadoop for large scale processing and No-SQL database from Oracle.

One things sure that this is a bold step in Oracle stamping it's authority in the new Database world, and taking to next level for Big Data, in-Memory and Analytics.The promises made by this release are to be realized, and certainly will be amazing to see some of advanced visualization capabilities being showcased by Larry Ellision on Exalytics.

Posted by Yogesh Bhatt at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Guest post by
Anand Balakrishnan, Principal Consultant, Infosys

ERP system have been adopted by over 90% of the global fortune 100 companies and 75% of fortune 500 corporates to handle the various facets of their operations. In the financial accounting space, while these companies have focused on the back office processing of records and generation of preliminary financials (P&L and Balance Sheets) a very small number of companies have any sort of automation in the last mile, namely generating the quarterly and annual financial statements that need to be submitted to varied set of external agencies including regulators, lenders and the street.

The upfront processing of financial records including generation of the consolidated financial statements use a high degree of automation and are tightly integrated with upstream transactional systems. The automation, integration and inherent checks and balances in ERP and financial consolidation systems provide a higher degree of confidence on the accuracy of financial information and helps reduce the time to close.

But on a quarterly and annual basis, the close process entails a number of additional activities not limited to

• reconciling key accounts,
• collaboration on generation of disclosures,
• incorporating commentaries and observations,
• incorporating non-financial indicators,
• repurposing financials based on the needs of the stakeholders, and finally
• generating and delivering information to each of the external agencies

These additional activities that are performed after the consolidated financials are generated but prior to them being reported to the outside world is often termed as "the last mile".

The current challenges in the last mile have resulted in a high cost of compliance to companies with a number of companies employing between 5 to 10 FTEs for 15 to 45 days to complete the various activities associated with generating quarterly and annual reports.

From the early 2000s, two separate but closely related trends have emerged to help make financial reporting more consistent across the globe. The emergence and adoption of IFRS that seeks to bring about consistencies in accounting treatment; and XBRL reporting which has slowly been gaining acceptance as a new standard for digitized reporting incorporates taxonomies that aim to standardize how financial information is reported. The primary benefit that XBRL seeks to bring is to simplify reporting and standardize reading and analyzing of electronic financial information by other systems.

In 2009 the SEC in the US, prescribed a timetable for entities to report financials as per XBRL. While XBRL has been gaining more global adoption, there is still a lot that remains to be done.

The focus on the last mile is the next big thing in financial reporting. The challenges that need to be addressed in the last mile can be broadly categorized into

1. Integrating the various last mile activities
2. Integrating the activities performed in the last mile with the upstream activities.

The future of external financial reporting entails a number of integration touch points... we are excited to see how this develops.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Guest post by
Abhishek Bhargava, Senior Consultant, Infosys

In the earlier blog Asset Management in Electricity Distribution Utility: The Challenges of Getting Softer we discussed about the first wave of transformation i.e. use of IT by Power industry to become softer and leaner. Here we will talk about the journey of this industry into the second wave of transformation - a transition from IT enabled organizations to smarter organizations using smart grid.

A small but growing number of utilities across the globe are either going for Smart Grid pilot or preparing Roadmap for Smart Grid. To appreciate the impact on Asset Management, let's first understand smart grid in simple words: "Smart Grid is an electrical network consisting of many Small & Big Generators, various Transmission Networks, Distribution Networks, Small & bulk Consumers, in conjugation with Information Network which can manage bi-directional communication of information, data and control signals enabling the electric network to respond in real time."

Smart Grid is aimed at better reliability, security & efficiency of electric grid, optimization of resources, utilization of small scale & renewable generation, integration of Smart appliances & customer devices, Peak demand reduction/shift, enabling the customer with energy as well as energy cost management.

This has tremendously increased the scope and complexity of asset management and has brought in new challenges to focus on. Asset management in Smart Grid aptly called the "next gen" asset management should address the following requirements/issues:

1. AMS as Common Database:   The asset management system is considered as common repository for all asset related data & it flows to downstream systems like GIS, Network Analysis System, SCADA etc. It results in to multiple subset of data in various systems resulting to data redundancy & issues related to synchronization.
2. Transducers, Sensors & Communication devices: In smart grid, transducers, sensors & communication devices will be playing a vital role. It will be attached with every vital asset. The next gen AM system should be able to capture relevant information as a part of main asset.
3. Built in intelligence: To attain the objective of optimization, reliability & security, the system should be intelligent enough to identify the asset health based upon the various operational parameters & trigger condition based preventive /breakdown maintenance. This calls for integration of remote asset monitoring capabilities with asset management system.
4. Managing Operational Data: Now a large quantum of operation data will be flowing to system against each asset because smart grid calls for a shift from periodical operational data gathering to near real time data analysis. The quantum of these data may be much higher than the asset data. The system need to keep this data to built history /intelligence to exploit the technologies like ANN & artificial intelligence for automated decision making.
5. Managing Complex Hierarchy: The Smart grid will be resulting in to much more complex electrical network along with information network. The AM system should be able to capture such complex & multiple hierarchies.
6. Agile and equipped field staff: In smart grid era, the use of assets is optimized with processes defined and executed across the supply chain. Assets are leveraged to maximize utilization, including just-in-time asset retirement, based on smart grid data and systems. The field staff thus needs to be agile, equipped with skills to operate on such assets and provide feedback to the system efficiently using mobile workforce.

It is very important that the next gen asset management system should be able to address all these issues.  The system should be dynamic in nature with built in intelligence so that it may be utilized to achieve the objectives of Smart Grid.

Note: I would like to specifically mention Abhishek Prasad Verma, Lead Consultant with Infosys for sharing ideas for this blog.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

In such a setup the Service Levels offered by the industry players and their concerted focus on core competencies is paramount and is assuming more importance each day. After all the basic essence of such a business is to:

• Maximize Service Revenue
• Reduce Complexity & Costs
• Improve Compliance

A typical Front and Back office process execution cycle would include the following stages.

1. Customer Order is captured in Front Office (FO) systems
2. These orders are transported to Back Office (BO) Transactional Systems for execution
3. Order Fulfillment occurs in BO systems
4. Agreement, Entitlement, Asset Creation are recorded in FO system along with a Service Request to install the product
5. Service Contracts are created in BO systems for rendering services and billing

Business imperatives can only be met when system capabilities are in place to provide complete contract authoring and execution solutions. These solutions should be capable to manage and extend warranties for usage and subscription based services. Alongside they should be robust enough to support complex service agreements, entitlement verification, determine the level of service available to customers via call center support, depot repair or field service processes.

At the end of the day superlative customer service will rake in moolah for the business. Accurate pricing and flexible billing options for accurate invoicing are key to customer satisfaction and IT capabilities should be aligned to meet these business goals.
Extending thoughts on parallel lines, if the product configuration involves challenging complexities, then subcontracting and contract manufacturing can yield highly tangible benefits. We have discussed on earlier occasions as well, the benefits brought in by these vital chains of supply chain. It still remains TRUE that Customer is the King, and each business strives to improve the service levels and at the same time focus on its core competencies.

Posted by Amit Sinha at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Guest post by
Vinod Kumar, Consultant, Infosys

Telecom sector has been chronically plagued by revenue leakage problems and often seen to be spending the maximum energy and budget on areas around how to not let it happen or in other words having in place an effective Revenue Assurance mechanism. Making it one of the most published area in the industry are the solutions around it yet the clients, be it the newcomers or the old-timers, are often marred by this problem. Not that there are no solution around it but it's the understanding of the solution/product offering and the judicious implementation which makes a solution stand out.

Recently I got a chance to work with a client hailing from telecom domain which was undergoing this classical problem of revenue leakage even though there were plenty of resources available to not to let this happen. The problem statement that client gave us was "We don't know what is my total customers and are we billing all of them?" This leads to two possible mistakes:

• Not billing a customer to whom service was sold
• Billing a customer who has requested for a cancellation

Digging deeper into the problem gave us an idea that root cause behind this problem was disparate source systems or multiple touch points for the order entry and lack of proper integration of Order Management (Siebel) and Billing (Oracle BRM) system.

OBIEE had already been chosen to answer the problem statement mentioned above, in other words, we had a challenge to bring in the accurate information from different systems to our warehouse which was not happening currently. Orders which were getting created in Siebel system were not flowing to BRM for billing purpose without errors and numerous person hours were being spent on after every load to back track before billing a customer.

Oracle AIA came as a handy remedy for us to deal with this problem and client already had it in place but that was not one of the best or the optimum utilization of this tool. During our data modeling exercise we put in use the canned views which we used to join the account and product information from Siebel and Oracle BRM which was existing in two separate compartments till now.  These views offer unique IDs to join the account and product dimensions helped us define single version of truth for client's account and product information.  Though we had to go for a rigorous testing whether we have got the right flow but that was one time and solved the problem for once and all.

We had to put in a great tool to right use and that re-affirmed my faith in "Think inside the Box" thing.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Guest post by
Amit Kumar Dey, Senior Consultant, Infosys

The importance of social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube no longer need any emphasis. Perhaps the power of these tools were not known even to the perpetrators of the great Middle East revolutions until they were able to garner support of millions and mobilize the masses which resulted in the end of decades of despotic rule. Social media which acted as the stimuli and later as a catalyst for the movement was very effectively used by the revolutionaries to unify and spread their message between themselves and also to animate support from the international community.

The use of social media by corporates has been limited mainly to marketing activities, and they have misconstrued the impact, that collaboration using social media, can bring about in their daily operations. They need to take a cue from the Middle East uprisings which unleashed the potential of collaborating using social media. Collaboration presents ample opportunities that can help businesses to improve their performance and extend their capabilities but it is the lack of tools to collaborate faster and smarter that is hampering the deployment of such strategy. In today's dynamic world everything is changing at lightning speed, presenting opportunities for value creation at every step. Businesses need to keep pace with such changes, if they wish to remain competitive and that is only possible if they move away from isolated approaches and archaic structures to an environment conducive for collaboration.

Social media can be used as a shared platform by employees, partners, customers, suppliers and other business stakeholders to collaborate with each other in realizing their business goals, managing change, addressing challenges and improving business processes. Social media will help to leverage the collective genius of the stakeholders and transform the business to gain competitive advantage.

Currently, the methods of collaboration used by most businesses are limited to Lotus Notes or Microsoft SharePoint, but these tools are inept in todays' world. Real time information is the success mantra for businesses today, and this has changed the way we consume information. This needs to be borne in mind and business communications need to be aligned the Facebook way - synchronous and intuitive. Although the only constant thing in the world is change, it is irony that the software that powers our businesses is disconnected from the truth. Information is power and we need smart tools with the ability capture, share and retain intellectual capital.

Having said this, ERP/CRM vendors do recognize the need to harness the power of social media within the enterprise and are incorporating the social media aspect into their next generation of enterprise application products. We already have some applications in the market with built-in social media capabilities, which can be leveraged to bring together diverse groups of business stakeholders to promote a mutual purpose that creates value. This new way of working- mass collaboration - is the value proposition of integrating social media with ERP applications.

According to Gartner analysts Mark McDonald and Anthony Bradley - 'Mass collaboration is the combination of leadership, readiness, culture and technology that when it exists together, provides employees with the opportunity to work in ways that improve and amplify individual ideas and contributions into organization-wide change.'

Embedding social media with ERP would aid the collaboration process by providing an environment conducive for knowledge sharing. Use of social media will help in establishing a borderless business community with a shared vision that delivers sustainable organizational performance. It will promote a new way of working with purpose-driven communities that will enhance productivity and improve efficiencies.

We have seen how the latest social CRM packages have incorporated many features that mimic the functionality of online social networking tools; some have even gone as far as integrating their offerings directly with online social networking tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter etc. However, socializing CRM without ERP applications wouldn't be complete.
Potential benefits of marrying social media tools with ERP include:

• Facilitation and streamlining of communications both within and outside the enterprise
• Increased cross functional interaction within the enterprise
• Building extended and better connected communities and leveraging the information from their interactions
• Enable creation of reusable assets from the tacit knowledge of key resources
• Ability to sort and save information as structured data for future analysis
• Ability to initiate loose form of collaboration like Mail, IM, VoIP from within application
• Possibility of integration with external forums to drive innovative development
• Enhanced product training, troubleshooting and user support
• Instant access to social networking profiles of prospects, customers and supply chain partners
• Access to market feedback about your company and competitors
• Better engagement with customers ensuring faster response to their needs and concerns

There are a host of Web 2.0 features that have been very aptly integrated with some of the latest CRM packages available in the market. To name a few there are: Recent items, favorites, watch list, enterprise search, ratings, tags, instant communication tools, Wikis and blogs, tweets, RSS feeds, communities/group spaces, analytics integration.

CRM vendors are doing a remarkable job in converting these Web 2.0 features into Enterprise 2.0 tools that enable social networking and other collaborative actions; so that people can use these features with the same convenience at work as they do in their personal lives.

Standalone CRM vendors were the early adopters of the Enterprise 2.0 cult; however it is just a matter of time before we see these features integrated with ERP applications as well.  ERP vendors are not quite late in joining the social media bandwagon and they are gearing up to provide an enterprise collaboration infrastructure which will surely bring about a radical change in the way we work.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

CMO help the OEM partners, design and manufacture their printers. There are multiple instances where the Manufacturing Partners (MP/CMO) specialize in contract manufacturing of printer products, including OEM components and parts. They can help the OEM design, prototype and mass produce their project start to finish. The bottomline is that engaging with the MP; OEMs can focus on their core competencies, which could be related to distribution of printer products or providing contractual services for them. With a core set of best practices and industry knowledge that spans the entire product development lifecycle ranging from product requirements definition, analysis, concept creation, analysis, design development, prototyping and manufacturing, CMO can enable OEM reach the market faster and at the same time reduce cost and improve product quality.

Typical capabilities of a printer CMO may include the following activities:

• Design and Product Development
• Comprehensive Engineering Services
• Application Software Development
• Value Engineering For Cost Reduction
• Testing Activities
• Manufacturing Activities
• Repair Activities

In my forthcoming blogs, I will discuss with you on finer aspects of this important link in the supply chain for the printing industry. It is truly interesting and educational to study how symbiosis can lead to mutual benefits. Success of the organizations depends on the extent to which each organization can harness such relationships to their potential.

Posted by Amit Sinha at 4:20 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Guest post by
Suchitha Prabakaran, Consultant, Infosys

In the current global business environment, efficient Procurement techniques, methodologies and processes play a vital role in providing a competitive edge- both operationally and financially for any organization irrespective of the size, nature of business, products dealt with, area of operations etc. Corporates now have realized the importance of streamlining and strategizing procurement processes as it makes a huge difference to the revenue and profitability of the organization.

Oracle Fusion Procurement which is a part of the Oracle Fusion Applications suite provides a fair set of advantages in facilitating advanced supply management:

• The application is designed to set a disciplined procurement environment providing relevant insight and operational rights to procurement users at different levels in the Procurement chain and various levels in the organizational hierarchy.
• Well defined workflow across the Oracle Fusion Procurement suite provides right access to necessary users with required rights to perform specific actions during the life cycle of the Procurement process. This would avoid compliance gaps, help track user actions, identify user mistakes and bring in accountability to every action of any user across the chain.
• User friendly and personalized role based dashboards along with user worklists and watch lists allows procurement users and management to identify and monitor areas that require immediate attention and also capitalize on opportunities that would yield more business.
• Embedded analytics focusing on business intelligence provide vital information to the management, daily users and suppliers. It provides for understanding of consumer spending behavior, procurement expenses and supplier timeliness and performance. Reports generated through state-of-the-art analytics on procurement information help the organization in designing strategies and aligning them to the business goals, identifying opportunities and monitoring trends.
• This application provides for inbuilt universally followed contract standards with the required flexibility to make business operations simpler while operating in a global economy.
• Integrating Sourcing capabilities of Oracle Fusion Procurement applications helps discover opportunities for savings, prioritize procurement actions and negotiate contracts and agreements ensuring collaboration with internal and external systems and parties and compliance with locally and internationally accepted standards.

Another key aspect to note is the Oracle Fusion Procurement Applications facilitate end user self service to a great extent. The user interface being easy to understand and adopt - increases efficiency in operations, enhances consumer shopping experience, promotes supplier enablement and end user satisfaction. The interface delivers user friendly features such as search options, favorites, recent transaction history, tagging and embedded learning that makes it easy to use the application with minimum training. This allows for key procurement professionals to get rid of the routine and mundane activities. Rather provides them an opportunity to concentrate on strategic procurement areas, designing the processes based on the latest trends and business needs, identifying and focusing on areas that require special attention/improvement across the procurement life cycle and its operations.

There are a number of aspects to be considered before a decision is made to implement a new Procurement application. Along with urge to expand, compete, and increase revenues and margins using optimum resources, it should be borne in mind that compliance related enforcements, impact of sudden changes to technology and business processes, controls and approval processes and short term and long term business objectives have been considered while taking decisions related to implementing new applications in the Procurement Domain. Oracle Fusion Procurement Applications have been built keeping these considerations in mind thereby ensuring business interests have been met.

Oracle Fusion Procurement applications being open and standard based can be easily integrated into Service-oriented architecture.  Being designed as a suite of modular applications, the Fusion Procurement applications can be deployed to work along with existing Oracle applications by investing minimum implementation effort with minimum disruption of business operations. The applications are built in such a way that organizations can choose to implement the entire suite of applications or one product family or one/more modules at one go or in a phased manner providing flexibility to the customers in bringing about a technology enhancement to suit the financial considerations, business needs and long term organization goals.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Oracle Utilities NMS 1.11 has been generally available for a few months now.  Since then, I have had an opportunity to work with it.   In this new version, older technology (X-Motif) is retired and the NMS is a Java based product.  When using the new NMS, it is important to not expect it to look exactly like it used to.  Now that it is in Java, it will not.  Gone is the Environment Manager (Eman) as a separate tool.  There is now a toolbar that is used to start NMS tools.  The buttons on the toolbar all have details display when you hover them that clarify their purpose.  When first using the new NMS version, it will take some time to find the new button to access the features desired, but as time goes, familiarity increases.  All the main functionalities are there, it may just take some time to learn the new button locations.  Once familiar, it is just as fast to work with if not faster. 

Yes, there are some minor functionalities that are gone.  For example, the SqlX tool no longer exists.  This is not a problem for a couple reasons.  Firstly, this is a tool used only by system administrative users, and is not for dispatcher use.  Secondly, tools such as TOAD and Oracle SQL Developer always were superior tools to use instead.  Other functionalities may work mostly the same, but not 100%.  An example of this would be Hide/Display.  Hide/Display functionality still exists for the viewer, but the Java version has some limitations the X-Motif version did not.  The loss of this minor function is made up for with gains elsewhere.  For example, the Java environment allows users to hover over icons/buttons and see explanation of the button.   The Java environment allows users to have multiple Work Agenda tools running so that 2 separate filters can be loaded concurrently.  There is also an outage summary on the top of the product Work Agenda.  The summary shows counts of numbers out, calls, and other information.    Another significant gain is the new 'help' pages that are available from each tool.

For the most part, administration of the NMS has gotten easier.  Since X-Motif is deprecated, it is no longer necessary to maintain and synchronize 2 sets of configurations.  There is only the one set (Java).   Also, adding or moving a button/label/field is simpler too.  In Java, the configuration can be simply deleted or pasted in their new place.  There is no need to concern with assigning proper index numbering to assign sequence.  There is no need to concern over how or to what a button/label/field is attached to another button/label/field.  There is no risk changing one column of a table will affect other columns.  The changes are not without some drawbacks.  In the past, tool configuration changes could be done with less impact to NMS users.  Sometimes it would not be necessary to have users see any downtime at all.  Now with the Java only NMS, system downtime is needed in most cases to deploy changes.  There are very few exceptions to this.

Occasionally, Oracle may have made oversights when converting functionality from the old X-Motif format to the new Java format.  If any logic, expected functionality or expected behavior seems missing, write the SR with Oracle.  It may be possible to fix it by making your own change, but alert Oracle to this issue too.

What have been your experiences with 1.11?  If you have and tips or observations, please share.  I would love to hear them.

Posted by Ross Shaich at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )