My opinion, yes. In the long run, WebCenter is built on the technology that Oracle is promoting and that companies are moving towards. WebCenter is geared to the Java developer, while non-Java developers can be productive in the Oracle Portal environment. And although it will take years to completely replace (if ever), I doubt Oralce will invest too much more money in Oracle Portal. Portlet and portal modularization will occur in WebCenter and content management in new CMS aquisitions made by Oracle.
So, is this good or bad…it depends on who you talk to, but I say indifferent. Welcome to technology; it changes – RAPIDLY – and vendors like Oracle need to keep up with advanacements in order to continue to land new customers. And if they play their cards right, they can typically keep enough existing customers during changes like these to make it more than worth it.
Want more insight into what is going on with this technology? Feel free to contact me.
Taken straight from the SP2 documentation:
“Report model generation from Oracle data sources that run on version 9.2.0.3 or later is supported. You can generate Oracle-based models by using Report Manager, Management Studio, or Model Designer.”
This is huge and wonderful news. We were connecting SQL Server to Oracle, and then creating models off of the SQL Server tables to accomplish this. Needless to say, we didn’t do too much of this. And perhaps more needless to say, we will be using the feature heavily. I didn’t like that it was not included in the original release of SSRS 2005, but I guess it is one of those things you really appreciate more since you didn’t have it in the first place. Now to test how well it works…I’m assuming it’ll be fine like most everything we have experienced with SSRS.
In some cases, I just don’t like the field-by-field logging when creating an audit trail for my database tables. While it might be needed in some cases (and it might make sense), most of the time, I am find that a simple audit table that stores an entire record of fact data is more useful and easier to manage for reporting, etc.
So, instead of a generic audit table that captures all old and new values for many tables, I prefer creating an audit table for each of my important fact tables. Drop me a line if you are struggling with how to implement auditing (on Oracle, SQL Server, or MySQL) and we can chat.
Oracle’s 10.1.3 SOA suite of products is very powerful. We, at M&S, are using BPEL for integration with salesforce.com and internal Oracle databases. Not only can logic be managed and processes can be automated, but human interaction can also be included to allow for true technology introduction into everyday business processes.
It is no secret that [very good] IT resources are a rare breed in the enterprise IT world. But, what is not apparent to many managers, recruiters, and executives is “Why?”.
All-too-often, developers, admins, architects, and higher level decision makers get caught up in the enterprise culture, a culture where each person is given the smallest piece of a bigger picture, where each person focuses on not just one business area, not just one application, not even just one aspect of implementing an application, but instead, people are expected to spend an enormous amount of time on one small – actually, tiny – piece of an application.
I was asked to work with someone who was a Senior Java Developer from a large enterprise and was shocked at what I experienced. This person could not form a simple SQL select statement to pull data out of an Oracle database. It wasn’t enough that I was shocked, however. This person themselves was shocked that developers at a mid-size corporation were actually expected to know how to design, build, and maintain an entire Java-based application (even if just a small one), including how it interacted with the database. I learned that she had come from an environment where she owned a single Java class and maintained it for years (it was pretty much her entire existence). It was a piece of code based entirely on Java logic and had no database interaction at all; learning how to work with a database was not going to be a problem for her, but learning how to do it effectively most certainly was.
What is your experience with developers that come from the largest of enterprises? I’m sure it has much to do with the specific organization, business area, application, team, and even direct manager, but my guess is that you are also finding technical people becoming more and more specialized (to the point of pigeon-holed) as technology becomes a larger “business” at every organization.
This was an interesting play. I assumed Oracle would look to get into the OS game at some point, but I didn’t anticipate this particular play.
For those of you who don’t know, Oracle is now offering support for Red Hat Linux since they feel they have a better infrastructure and ability to offer the kind of support enterprises are looking for from their OS vendor; of course, this means Oracle thinks Red Hat is not currently offering this level of support and/or is not capable of doing so in the near future.
Of course, this begs the question: “why doesn’t Oracle just buy Red Hat?”. Well, who’s to say they didn’t try? It seems reasonable that a buy out was explored to some extent and it just didn’t seem like the best option (either due to price or due to the idea that this strategy might prove more useful to Oracle). Why not just take away a good chunk of Red Hat’s revenue stream; they will either go belly-up or make it much more of a bargain for a buy out at that point.
In either case, I think it certainly seems Oracle is getting into an arena that is incredibly interesting. I wouldn’t be surprised if we will see “Oracle Linux” in the not-too-distant future, but then again, there may be another option that proves more profitable and beneficial than that which will be discovered. In either case, I think we can safely welcome Oracle into the OS market, as they have positioned themselves squarely inside it. I’ll be watching carefully as we see what happens to Red Hat as a company, Linux as an enterprise OS, and even Microsoft with Windows (XP, Vista, and Server products).
