SoleraTec, a provider of innovative video lifecycle management and storage products, has released the PHOENIX RSM video surveillance management software solution for Oracle Solaris 11 operating system on the SPARC processor. With the performance capabilities of the SPARC servers running Oracle Solaris 11, multiple concurrent video camera feeds can be displayed along with camera carousel (patrolling) and various live-view camera layout options.

Java Cloud Service and Developer Cloud Service are available for your test! Let us know when your fist application is running! At our WebLogic Community Workspace (WebLogic Community membership required) we posted the latest cloud material:

• Java Cloud Service
  • JCS Powerpoint Click-Thru Demos:
    • Short Click Thru | Part 1 Long Click Thru | Part 2 Long Click Thru
      

o Solution Brief: Java Cloud Service - PDF

• Java Cloud Service - Cheat Sheet | Presentation
  
• Java Cloud Service FAQ
  
• Developer Cloud Service: Getting Started with Oracle Developer Cloud Service - Tutorial
  

For more information please use the cloud tag at our WebLogic Community Workspace (WebLogic Community membership required).

WebLogic Partner Community

For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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The Oracle Service Bus is often used for service virtualization. Endpoints are exposed on the Service Bus which proxy other services. Using such an abstraction layer can provide benefits such as (among many other things) monitoring/logging, dealing with different versions of services, throttling/error handling and result caching. In this blog I will provide a small (Java) script, which works for SOA Suite 11g and 12c, which determines exposed endpoints on the Service Bus.

How to determine endpoints?

In order to determine endpoints on the Service Bus, The Service Bus MBeans can be accessed. These MBeans can obtained from within a local context inside the Service Bus or remotely via JMX (when configured, see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1013916/how-to-enable-jmx-on-weblogic-10-x). In this example I’ll use a remote connection to a Weblogic Server instance which runs on the same machine (JDeveloper IntegratedWeblogicServer). To browse MBeans, you can use jvisualvm (http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/visualvm/) which is distributed as part of the Oracle JDK. JVisualVM has a plugin to browse MBeans.

When connected, the Service Bus MBeans are located under com.oracle.osb. The proxy services which define the exposed endpoints, can be recognized by the Proxy$ prefix. In order to determine the actual endpoint, you can look at the ResourceConfigurationMBean of the proxy service. Under configuration, transport-configuration you can find a property called url. The script also filters HTTP SOAP services since the url field is also used for other transports. A replace of // with / is done on the combination server:host/url since the url can start with a /. This causes no difference in functioning but provides better readable output. If you want WSDL’s, you can add ‘?wsdl’ to the obtained endpoint. Read the complete article here.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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MySQL Central @ OpenWorld 2015 will take place October 25-29 in San Francisco. It will, as last year, be an integral part of Oracle OpenWorld.

While dates are still subject to change, the Call for Papers (CFP) will likely open around March 25 and close around April 29, remaining open during 5 weeks. You can however already prepare your submission(s) now in order to avoid any rush and be ready to submit once the CFP opens. Here is the information you will need to provide to submit a session:

• Title
• Conference session type: This can either be a conference session (45 min), a Birds-of-a-Feather session (45 min), or a tutorial (2 hours). You are obviously welcome to submit several sessions.
• Abstract: 750 characters maximum including spaces
• Speaker’s name(s), e-mail(s), phone(s) and bio(s)
• Track - MySQL Central @ OpenWorld 2015 will have 6 tracks:

• Performance & Scalability
• High Availability
• NoSQL & Big Data
• Cloud and DevOps
• Database Administration
• Architecture and Application Development

Get started now and you will have ample time to prepare your submissions.

Let us know if you have any question. We look forward to a fantastic MySQL Central @ OpenWorld 2015!

In 2015 the Oracle EMEA Exadata, Manageability and Servers and Storage Partner Communities will celebrate a single joint Partner Community Forum in Budapest, Hungary on April 14-16, 2015.

For details and registration, click here

Thinking about upgrading from Oracle SOA Suite 11g to 12c? Then Oracle ACE Director Danilo Schmeidel has a 2 Minute Tech Tip for you!

Danilo is a Solution Architect at Opitz Consulting, where he specializes in SOA and BPM. He's also frequent speaker and writer on those topics. His tech tip is based on his presentation, The Road to SOA suite 12c, which explains "different upgrade strategies, the difference between in-flight upgrade and migration, important pre-upgrade tasks," and other considerations.

Related Resources

• Article Series: Industrial SOA
  The contributors to this 13-part article series include Danilo Schmeidel, Jürgen Kress, Berthold Maier, Hajo Normann, Guido Schmutz, Bernd Trops, Clemens Utschig-Utschig, and Torsten Winterberg
• Podcast: The Case for Adaptive Case Management
  A 3-part panel discussion featuring Danilo Schmiedel, Nico Van Benthem, Manas Deb, Lonneke Dikmans, and Torsten Winterberg
• Podcast: Old Habits Die Hard in the New SOA World
  A 3-part panel discussion featuring Danilo Schmeidel, Lonneke Dikmans, Ronald van Luttikuhuizen, Hajo Normann, Guido Schmutz, and Torsten Winterberg.

Connect with Danilo Schmeidel

Want more 2 Minute Tech Tips? Click here.

Have an idea for a 2 Minute Tech Tip? Contact me: bob.rhubart-AT-oracle.com

Von: Reggie Bradford, Senior Vice President Product Development bei Oracle

Als ich vor 20 Jahren meine erste Position im Marketing antrat, war das Entwickeln von Werbebotschaften eine Talent- und Bauchsache, gekoppelt mit A/B-Tests. Man verließ sich auf seinen Instinkt und seine Erfahrung frei nach dem Motto „Ich habe ein gutes Gefühl“ oder „Das hat das letzte Mal auch funktioniert.“ Das konnte allerdings auch gehörig danebengehen und nicht selten wurde ein Produkt wieder vom Markt genommen, weil es trotz guten Bauchgefühls und Tests ein Ladenhüter wurde.

Myriade an Marketing-Automation-Software-Tools

Im Laufe der Jahre wurde im Marketing immer weniger dem Zufall überlassen. Moderne Marketer arbeiten heute fast wissenschaftlich. Sie stützen ihre Entscheidungen auf eine Myriade an ausgefeilten Technologien und präziseste Daten. Marketing-Automation-Software erlaubt uns, Kundenbeziehungen zielgerichtet zu managen. Wir wissen, wann wir wie wen am besten erreichen.

Das Einzige, bei dem die Technologie uns weiterhin im Dunkeln tappen lässt, ist das „Was“, also die Botschaft selbst. Die richtige Message zu finden ist immer noch eine Herausforderung. Bei der Frage, welche Emotionen zur gewünschten Reaktion führen oder welche Produkt-Features wir am besten in den Vordergrund rücken, sind wir auf uns selbst gestellt. Bisher gab es keine Methode, mit der sich sämtliche Bausteine einer Marketingbotschaft ausreichend testen lassen. Am Ende ist es dann doch wieder das Bauchgefühl des Werbetexters, das beispielsweise über die Tonalität entscheidet.

Künstliche Intelligenz und maschinelles Lernen finden den Weg ins Marketing

Dies könnte sich jedoch bald ändern. Eine Reihe junger Software-Unternehmen macht sich die Prinzipien der Informatik und Statistik zunutze, um uns Marketer bei der Entwicklung der perfekten Botschaft zu unterstützen. Dazu werden Daten, die Auskunft geben, wie ein bestimmtes Wort oder ein bestimmter Satz wirken, mit semantischen Algorithmen kombiniert. Marketingtexte aus der Maschine sozusagen. Das klingt gewöhnungsbedürftig, ist jedoch aus meiner Sicht sehr erfolgversprechend. Mit einem solchen systematischen und datenbasierter Ansatz lassen sich Millionen möglicher Varianten von Sprache – emotional, beschreibend oder funktional – optimieren, sei es für Bannerwerbung, Webseiten, Social Ads oder mobile Endgeräte. Das klingt doch verlockend, oder?

Den vollständigen Beitrag können Sie auf Englisch auf forbes.com lesen.

Webcast: Setup and Integration of Work in Process with Oracle Quality

Date: February 25, at 11:00 am ET, 10:00 am CT, 9:00 am MT, 8:00 am PT, 8:30 pm, India Time (Mumbai, GMT+05:30)

This one-hour advisor webcast is recommended for technical users, functional users, system administrators, database administrators who want to learn more about the setup and integration of Oracle Work In Process and Oracle Quality. During this one hour session you will create a collection plan, enable it for move transactions, create a discrete job, and perform the move transaction for the job by entering Quality results, reviewing the Quality results, Closing the work order and reviewing the material transactions. The summary will include additional resources related to this topic.

Registration: Webcast: Setup and Integration of Work in Process with Oracle Quality

View the Advisor Webcasts: Current Schedule and Archived Recordings here.

In case you missed it, we have recently started a series on our bi-monthly Middleware Newsletter where we have started to discuss in detail the use cases we are seeing for our Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings. We kicked off the series in our January edition by taking a look at use cases for Java Cloud Service. Here is the feature in case you missed it or needed a refresher.

Use Cases: Oracle Java Cloud Service—The Most Advanced, Complete Platform as a Service for Your Apps

Cloud computing—software as a service, platform as a service, and infrastructure as a service—is an undisputed game-changer in the corporate world. But with so many different cloud options, it can be complicated to align them with possible real-world scenarios. In a new series of articles, the Oracle Fusion Middleware newsletter will present use cases that illustrate how various aspects of cloud computing work within a business setting. We'll start with a look at Oracle Java Cloud Service. 

Use Case 1: Accelerate Application Development
"One of the underlying business drivers behind digital transformation is the increasing need to produce targeted applications at a rapid rate," says Oracle's Vice President of product management Mike Lehmann. "Instead of apps that run for 10 years, companies want apps that run for a month, or the duration of a marketing campaign." 

Oracle Java Cloud Service satisfies this need for speed with fast, effective development and a testing environment that lets developers rapidly develop and operationalize Java apps with cloud-based testing and quality assurance, built-in high-availability options, and rapid change management. 

Full integration with Oracle Developer Cloud Service further strengthens its value by providing an integrated enterprise Java development toolset. "You can build a development environment in Oracle Developer Cloud Service and it will be completely integrated with Oracle Java Cloud Service," says Lehmann. This enables developers to provision and use capacity on demand. He cites one organization that needs apps set up to coincide with weekly events spanning a season. "The idea of having an instantly available Java infrastructure that lets them build in days, if not minutes, is hugely valuable." 

Use Case 2: Move to Cloud to Gain Operational Efficiency
The need to cut IT complexity is highlighted in IT operations' ongoing quest to cut costs by simplifying the management of the application lifecycle. Take, for example, a use case involving one organization's need to manage a large installation of Oracle WebLogic servers, a complex environment where maintenance patches and security updates must be administered consistently. With Oracle Java Cloud Service, instant patching and backup and restore are built in. "It can be as simple as one click of a button," says Lehmann. "It's attractive for customers that want to simplify maintenance of their existing environment." 

Use Case 3: Run Java Workloads in the Cloud with Minimal Risk
In this scenario, Oracle Java Cloud Service's preintegrated stack of cloud services simplifies architectural complexities while also helping companies easily extend existing IT investments into the cloud via the same platform used on premises. For example, one enterprise with an Oracle WebLogic server was able to run departmental workloads in the cloud without any interruption to the users. "It's an identical environment, but with a dramatically simplified architecture around it," says Lehmann.

Attend one of Oracle's signature cloud events to get more details and learn about real-world scenarios, customer successes, and the future of cloud computing. TheCloud Platform Online Forumslated for January 28, 2015 at 10 a.m. PT features presentations from IDC Program Vice President for SaaS and Cloud Services Robert P. Mahowald and Oracle's Vice President of Product Marketing for Technology Software Rex Wang. And be sure to look for anOracle CloudWorldevent coming to a city near you. Reimagine your business in one day with tracks that focus on marketing, human resources, sales, customer service, back-office, development, customer experience, the public sector, and other special topics.

Don't miss another feature or news. Subscribe today to receive the newsletter. 

 Learn How Managed Cloud Services Can Be Your On-Ramp to the Cloud at Alliance 15

Will you be attending the Alliance 15 conference taking place March 15-18 in Nashville?  If so, then you won't want to miss the Oracle Managed Cloud Services: Your On-Ramp to the Cloud session on Tuesday, March 17th at 9:15 a.m.  Oracle Managed Cloud Services provides a secure, robust, integrated on-ramp to your hybrid cloud solutions.  In this session, we will lay out the vision and strategy behind enabling clients to focus on innovation, not integration.  You will learn how Oracle delivers enterprise-grade, end-to-end managed cloud services across its broad portfolio of business applications, middleware, database, and hardware technologies.  Attend this session and learn how to confidently start your journey to the cloud.  Click here for more information.

Managed Cloud Services Executive Summit:  Cloud Solutions that Accelerate Business Value

March 24, 2015 in Austin, Texas

Cloud computing is changing the way technology impacts and delivers value to the organization.  While cost is still a primary driver for cloud, improved business agility and faster innovation are growing factors for cloud adoption.  How can you take advantage of the trend toward cloud computing and leverage the investments you've already made in Oracle?  Join us for the Oracle Managed Cloud Services Executive Summit where our executives will explore the different cloud delivery models available from Oracle and why a privately managed cloud may be the right model for part or all of your organization.  For more information call 719.757.2065.

Germans are not only known for being precise and timely - but sometimes also for being too direct. Well, Roy could tell you stories ... and I always honor his politeness

Enough about stereotypes. I work with a customer at the moment on their 12c upgrades. And I did recommend the most recent PSU (Patch Set Updates) for their Grid Infrastructure environments running Oracle Restart. Same of course for the database homes but this blog post will just name some findings I've had the other night when trying to apply the January 2015 GI PSU to my Oracle Restart environment.

First of all, start here:

• Drill down from MOS Note:161818.1 (Click on the Release Link for 12.1.0!) into
• Oracle 12.1 Support Status and AlertsMOS Note:1565065.1 and further into 
• 12.1.0.2 Patch Set - Availability and Known Issues MOS Note:1683799.1 to get
• Recommendations forpatches on top of Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 - and of course for Grid Infrastructure (GI), Engineered Systems and Database In-Memory as well.

For GI you'll get the following recommendations:

Grid Infrastructure

Document	Description	Rolling RAC	Patch Download
Note:20132450.8	Combo of 12.1.0.2.2 OJVM PSU and 12.1.0.2.2 GI PSU (Jan 2015)	Part	Patch:20132450
Note:19954978.8	12.1.0.2.2 (Jan 2015) Grid Infrastructure Patch Set Update (GI PSU)	Yes	Patch:19954978

Well, first question:
Do you need the Combo Patch or the non-Combo? 

My personal recommendation: Take the non-Combo Patch as the combo patch includes not only the GI PSU, but also the Database PSU, the OJVM Patch and some other things you will not need for patching your Grid Infrastructure only. Of course I can see the benefit of downloading just one big piece and applying everything all together to my environment. But first of all parts of the patch (speaking of OJVM) are not rolling applicable - and second I'd like to control and script things separately. But please feel free to see and do this in a different way.

So I did download Patch:19954978 to my environment. Unzipped it. 
.

You all know it already - you will need a new OPatch!

Of course my OPatch version is too old. You will need at least OPatch 12.1.0.1.5 - the most recent one is OPatch 12.1.0.1.6 - and you simply download it via MOS patch 6880880and install it after removing the old directory into your $ORACLE_HOME. 
.

First learning experience? OPatch doesn't do anything without a response file.

The reason for this (at least for me as I don't patch daily) new requirement seems to be the new opatchauto call which scripts the entire apply process in a silent way. Well, at least the patch readme tells me what to do. Please read MOS Note:966023.1 to learn about how to create this response file.

If you do not have the OCM response file (ocm.rsp), see the following My Oracle Support Document 966023.1How To Create An OCM Response File For Opatch Silent Installation.

I did create it with OCM OFF as I don't see a benefit in my environment for using OCM. And just on the side: I was a bit worried that this note does not contain the new opatchauto syntax but instead lists an example (which is always good and nice and helpful) from the old days.

$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/ocm/bin/emocmrsp -no_banner -output /u02/unconfig.rsp

-

Second learning experience? Analyze analyzes ... not everything!

In the readme under 2.2 you'll find also the requirement to run an anylze for conflict detection and resolution first. Maybe I'm too naive as I so happy with all the stuff orachk can deliver - and expected too much. In my case the anylyze signaled: All good, sky is bright and nice and clear - ready to fly!

#GRID_HOME/OPatch/opatchauto apply <UNZIPPED_PATCH_LOCATION>/19954978 -analyze -ocmrf <ocm response file>

You'll read below why my assumption was incorrect.
.

Third learning experience? An error is an error is an error!

Can you expect a patch to get applied correctly in the first run?

opatchauto apply /oradata/grid/12.1.0/19954978 -oh /oradata/grid/12.1.0 -ocmrf /oradata/grid/12.1.0/OPatch/ocm/bin/emocmrsp 

I did. Well ... mine failed. Must be Murphy's law See the log below - I have marked the failing part in red.

2015-02-16_19-45-09 :
Failed to run this command :
/oradata/grid/12.1.0/OPatch/opatch napply -phBaseFile /tmp/OraGI12Home1_oracle_patchList -local  -invPtrLoc /oradata/grid/12.1.0/oraInst.loc -oh /oradata/grid/12.1.0 -silent -ocmrf /oradata/grid/12.1.0/OPatch/ocm/bin/emocmrsp
oracle.opatchauto.gi.RunExecutionSteps.runGenericShellCommands(RunExecutionSteps.java:913)
oracle.opatchauto.gi.RunExecutionSteps.processAllSteps(RunExecutionSteps.java:215)
oracle.opatchauto.gi.GIPatching.processPatchingSteps(GIPatching.java:544)
oracle.opatchauto.gi.OPatchautoExecution.main(OPatchautoExecution.java:141)
Command"/oradata/grid/12.1.0/OPatch/opatch napply -phBaseFile /tmp/OraGI12Home1_oracle_patchList -local  -invPtrLoc /oradata/grid/12.1.0/oraInst.loc -oh /oradata/grid/12.1.0 -silent -ocmrf /oradata/grid/12.1.0/OPatch/ocm/bin/emocmrsp" execution failed:
UtilSession failed:
Prerequisite check"CheckSystemSpace" failed.

Log file Location for the failed command: /oradata/grid/12.1.0/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch2015-02-16_19-45-03PM_1.log

2015-02-16_19-45-09 :

--------------After fixing the cause of failure you have two options shown below:
Run 'opatchauto resume'
  or
Manually run the commands listed below
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

/oradata/grid/12.1.0/OPatch/opatch napply -phBaseFile /tmp/OraGI12Home1_oracle_patchList -local  -invPtrLoc /oradata/grid/12.1.0/oraInst.loc -oh /oradata/grid/12.1.0 -silent -ocmrf /oradata/grid/12.1.0/OPatch/ocm/bin/emocmrsp (Run as oracle) - (TRIED BUT FAILED)

.
Now the question is:
How much space does it require? 

At this point I was wondering as the analyze passed successfully - and I couldn't find anything in the readme about specific space requirements. My disk had roughly 8GB of free space - and as my GI Restart installation's footprint was around 6GB I don't had any bad thoughts. 
.

Forth learning experience? Always ee the logfile first ...

Just rerunning the mentioned command gave me the correct information (just wondering why OPatch couldn't tell me this during the failed run?). So I did execute as oracle user:

/oradata/grid/12.1.0/OPatch/opatch napply -phBaseFile /tmp/OraGI12Home1_oracle_patchList -local  -invPtrLoc /oradata/grid/12.1.0/oraInst.loc -oh /oradata/grid/12.1.0 -silent -ocmrf /oradata/grid/12.1.0/OPatch/ocm/bin/emocmrsp

Receiving finally this result:

Verifying environment and performing prerequisite checks...
Prerequisite check"CheckSystemSpace" failed.
The details are:
Required amount of space(12773.858MB) is not available.
UtilSession failed:
Prerequisite check"CheckSystemSpace" failed.
Log file location: /oradata/grid/12.1.0/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch2015-02-16_19-49-04PM_1.log

Ouch - 12.7GB of free space??? Really? Seriously?? Now I was scared. 

The patch for Linux x86-64 has a tip size of 873 MB - but unzipped it takes 3.3 GB. So why does it require 12.7 GB of free space? Actually I don't know the answer yet but I will follow up here as soon I know the details. Colleagues in Development ensure that especially on AIX you will need even more free space, such as in the area of 22GB!!!

One of the reasons for such a huge space requirement may be this:

Starting with 10.2, Opatch does not backup only the affected modules, it also takes a backup of the complete affected libraries to $ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage/<patchid>/backup/<lib_directory_name>/<library_name>.

.

Fifth learning experience? There are workarounds ...

Blogs are sometimes VERY helpful. I found two helpful entries from external bloggers (but didn't bookmark them so I can't credit them here - sorry).

/oradata/grid/12.1.0/OPatch/opatch napply -phBaseFile /tmp/OraGI12Home1_oracle_patchList -local  -invPtrLoc /oradata/grid/12.1.0/oraInst.loc -oh /oradata/grid/12.1.0 -silent -ocmrf /oradata/grid/12.1.0/OPatch/ocm/bin/emocmrsp OPatch.SKIP_VERIFY_SPACE=true

Of course you can't give this variable at the end to opatchauto as it wouldn't understand.
.

Final learning lesson? Clean up is a great idea!

This is not as simple as I did expect it. Of course, it's not. But please see this MOS Note:550522.1 - How To Avoid Disk Full Issues Because OPatch Backups Take Big Amount Of Disk Space
.

Famous Last Words?

Patches are great. In fact YOU NEED TO PATCH. Take the PSUs. There's no way out as it will help you to avoid plenty of known issues. But I hope that my above learning experience may help you to sail around one or the other pitfall
. 

--Mike

By Anadi Upadhyaya

Contrary to popular belief, listening is an incredibly complex skill to master.  Almost all relationships in life demand constant listening attention and your relationship with your workforce is no different.

Leadership challenges keep changing with the time. There is no doubt that tools to provide actionable insights to lead the workforce have evolved over the years but so has the workforce. The way people used to interact, communicate and collaborate has changed and it will keep changing with time. One thing that has remain unchanged is the question "Are you listening to me?" ; no need to say that it’s a question from an employee, it was always there and will be there for years to come.

How this question is asked varies. Some employees are vocal enough to ask this question directly, some prefers their action speaks for them whereas some prefer both action and words. Regardless, you need to master the skill to not only listen to the spoken but also the unspoken.

It’s the listening capability of an organization that provides it with the array of activities to perform to keep their workforce motivated. It’s an absolute necessity to listen to your workforce and this gives birth to various product offerings. You need to leverage these offerings in place to know how well you are managing your talent.

Perfection will come from your connection with your workforce. Strong information gathering skills will not help unless you have a strong foundation of trust in place so that your workforce gets an answer back that "Yes, we are listening not only to reply but to understand you and we are getting into heart of every conversation ”. Everyone should get this answer back not just the privileged few… Do you agree?

Anadi Upadhyaya is a Director of Workforce Compensation Product Development at Oracle. He is leading global teams and actively involved in HCM customers' success story on the cloud and on-premise. Anadi is a technology leader, blogger and patent holder with a proven track record for delivery of enterprise business applications. He has unique combination of abilities to set functional and technical strategy, converting them to achievable plan of actions, and driving to realization and customer success. Follow him on Twitter @AnadiUpadhyaya

The greatest threat of a data breach –intentional or not - continues to be from employees, contractors and partners – people you are supposed to be able to trust. On February 12th, Oracle presented to ISACA members on the critical nature of establishing policies, technology and best practices to manage, monitor and audit the use of mobile devices as part of a larger Identity Management strategy.

Our presenter was Mark Wilcox, who is a Senior Principal Product Manager at Oracle. Leveraging his 20 years of experience in the computing industry and the Identity and Access space, Mark delivered a very focused session on best practices and industry guidance that would benefit any organization evaluating their mobile strategy.   Please click on the following link to replay the event from February 12th, 2015.

For more information on ISACA, and how they can support you on a student, professional or academic level, please visit them on their website at www.isaca.org  or directly on their Membership Page. 

Replay Webcast Here

This upcoming May, data-driven marketers, publishers and industry leaders will all converge on NYC for the Oracle Data Cloud Summit.Attendees will hear from and interact with data luminaries and practitioners who will show the way to the future based on the evolving realities of data-driven business.  

Data success stories are a critical part of showing the way to that future, which is why call for submissions for the Oracle Data Cloud Activate Awards is now open.  The Oracle Data Cloud Activate Awards recognize success and creativity with the use of data in products, services or campaigns to drive smarter marketing and business actions.  

Marketers, publishers and advertising technology vendors are all encouraged to nominate their organizations to showcase data innovation.  Learn more here, including how to apply, what the requirements are and what prizes the winners will be eligible for.

If your most current Oracle Database Certification is on Oracle9i Database or earlier, keep your credential(s) active by upgrading to a current version of Oracle Database certification by November 1, 2015. 

Oracle Certification announced a new Recertification Policy in November 2014, requiring you to maintain a current version or certification in order to keep your Oracle Database credentials in an active status. This is a reminder that on November 1, 2015 your current Oracle7 - Oracle9i Database credentials will become inactive unless you upgrade to a current version of Oracle Database certification before that date.

Please take action as soon as possible if you are in this situation, in order to remain active and maintain access to current Oracle Certification benefits.

Oracle University provides several exam preparation tools to meet your exam prep needs:

• Training
• Practice Tests
• Exam Preparation Seminars

You can also take advantage of discounted training packages that include OU training, Exam Preparation Seminar, Kaplan Practice Test and an Exam Voucher.

Upgrade Now

With Ksplice you can update the kernel on a running system applying the latest kernel security errata. Patches are effective immediately without any need to reboot. Ksplice applies updates in the background without halting the system or restarting applications.

Watch this 12 minute video and learn to:

In a Multitenant database,you can create user accounts within the PDB's just like you normally would. For example this command:

SQL> show con_name

CON_NAME
------------------------------
TESTPDB

SQL> create user dbargf identified by robert;

Will create a user account called dbargf within the container named TESTPDB. The user will not be created in any other container. This is known as a local user account within the CDB architecture. It is local to a unique PDB.

This isolation is in alignment with the notion that each PDB is isolated from the parent CDB.

If you had a PDB called PDBTWO, then you could create a different dbargf account in that PDB. That account would be completely separate from the TESTPDB local user account created earlier. The upshot of all of this is that, in general, the namespace for a user account is at the level of the PDB. However, there is an exception.

In the root container of a CDB you cannot create normal user accounts, as seen in this example:

SQL> show con_name

CON_NAME
------------------------------
CDB$ROOT

SQL> create user dbargf identified by robert;
create user dbargf identified by robert
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-65096: invalid common user or role name

This is a problem because we will probably need to create separate accounts to administer the CDB at some level (for backups, for overall management) or even across PDB's but with restricted privileges.

For example, let's say I wanted to have a DBA account called dbargf that would be able to create tablespaces in any PDB. I would create a new kind of user account called a common account.

The common account naming format is similar to a normal account name - except that it starts with a special set of characters, C## by default. Too create a common user account called dbargf we would log into the root container and use the create user command as seen here:

SQL>create user c##dbargf identified by robert;

Likewise you use the drop user command to remove a common user account.

When a common user account is created, the account is created in all of the open PDB's of the pluggable database. At the same time, the account is not granted any privileges.

If a PDB was not open when the common user account is created, it will be created when the PDB is opened. When a PDB is plugged in, the common user account will be added to that PDB.

As I mentioned before, in a non-CDB environment and in PDB's, when a user account is created it does not have any privileges and the same is true with a common user account.

For example, if we try to log into the new c##dbargf account we get a familiar error:

ERROR:
ORA-01045: user C##DBARGF lacks CREATE SESSION privilege; logon denied

The beauty of a common user account or role is that it's privileges can span across PDB's. For example, a common user account can have DBA privileges
in two PDB's in a CDB, but it might not have DBA privileges in the remaining PDB's.

You grant privileges to common users as you would any other user - through the grant command as seen here:

SQL> connect / as sysdba
Connected.

SQL> grant create session to c##dbargf;
Grant succeeded.

SQL> connect c##dbargf/robert
Connected.

When the grant is issued from the ROOT container, the default scope of that grant is just to the ROOT container. As a result of this grant then, we can connect to the root container.

C:\app\Robert\product\12.1.0.2\dbhome_2\NETWORK\ADMIN>sqlplus c##rgfdba/robert
SQL*Plus: Release 12.1.0.2.0 Production on Wed Feb 18 14:15:24 2015
Copyright (c) 1982, 2014, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Last Successful login time: Wed Feb 18 2015 14:15:20 -08:00

Connected to:
Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Advanced Analytics and Real Application Testing options

SQL> exit

However if we try to connect to a PDB, we will get an error:

SQL> alter session set container=newpdb;
ERROR:
ORA-01031: insufficient privileges

It is in this way that the isolation of PDB’s is maintained (by default).

The default scope of all grants is limited to the container (or PDB) which they are granted. So, if you grant a privilege in the NEWPDB PDB, then that grant only has effect in the NEWPDB PDB.

As an example of this isolation, let's see what happens when we grant the create user privilege to the c##dbargf user and try to create a new common user with c##dbargf afterwards.

First, we grant the create user privilege - this is pretty much what we do today:

grant create user to c##dbargf;

However, when c##dbargf tries to create a user, we still get an error:

create user c##dbanew identified by dbanew
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01031: insufficient privileges

This serves to underscore that by default, grants to a common user (any user for that matter) by default only apply to the container that the grant occurs in. So, the create privilege grant in this case only applies to the ROOT container.

The problem here is that when you create a common user, Oracle tries to create that user in all PDB's. Since c##dbargf does not have create user privileges in all of the PDB's, the command fails when Oracle recurses through the PDB's and tries to create the c##dbargf common user.

So, how do we deal with this? How do we grant the create user privilege to the c$$dbargf account so that it's able to create other common users.

What we do is use the new containers clause which is part of the grant command. In this example, we are using the container=all parameter to indicate that the grant should apply across all containers. Here is an example:

SQL>Connect / as sysdba
connected.

SQL> grant create session to c##dbargf container=all;
Grant succeeded.

Now, let’s try that create user command again:

SQL> create user c##dbanew identified by dbanew;
User created.

Note that we had to log in as SYSDBA to issue the grant. This is because, at this time, the SYSDBA privileged account was the only account that had the ability to grant the create session privilege across all PDB's.

We could give the c##dbargf account the ability to grant the create user privilege command to other accounts if we had included the "with admin option" option during the grant.

So, it's clear then that just because you create a common user, it's like any other user. It essentially has no rights to begin with anywhere. Next time I'll address common users in PDBs and I'll also talk a bit more about grants in the PDB world.