Supplier Portal – Oracle EBS and Middleware

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The Challenge

ABC, a publicly traded services and manufacturing organization, has leveraged Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) to manage a variety of back-office functions, including their suppliers. Suppliers have been provided data from EBS manually by internal teams — the data sent has varied in both content and as well as format.

Internal teams spend valuable time generating reports manually for external supplier organizations and suppliers are left with the tedious process of generating their own reports. All the while, both groups may be relying on measures out of line with ABC’s priorities.

The Solution

We took a systematic approach to the issue, addressing:

  1. EBS/Data
  2. Discoverer/Reporting Logic
  3. Portal/UI

The Results

Finally, by setting up proper SSO and hooks from Portal to Discoverer and integrating end-to-end all the way down into the database, users in Portal (regardless of whether they are internal or external users) see only what their user account can see. Additionally, by leveraging the latest Portal 10.1.4 features, we were able to provide ABC with a portal that had a completely customized look-and-feel matching their external website exactly.

Within days, the entire solution was architected, designed, and developed. We were all excited about the quick progress and all of ABC’s expectations were exceeded.

Preventing sensitive information from populating form field history: cross-browser solution

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When you have users submitting sensitive information on your website while on a public computer, how can you ensure that the next person to use that public computer does not see previous user’s sensitive information? To be clear, this is the type of thing we’re trying to prevent:

form_input_history

Most of the time, the browser on that public computer should be locked down to the point where the form history is not saved. But that’s leaving it up to each browser + security policy, and it’s not exactly the “cutting it off at the source” kind of solution that would be ideal.

A common approach to solve this problem is to randomize the name of the form field input. i.e. append a random integer from 1-9999999 to the name of the form field input you’d like to protect when the page is loaded, and then subsequently handle that new random field name in the backend. That way each time you visit the page, the form input field appears to be new since it (likely) has a unique name and therefore no form history. However, this may require significant workaround if you are using a backend framework to handle this approach.

This article covers a cross-browser solution that will nip that sensitive info in the bud.

CSS Dies in the Enterprise. Why!?

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We have been implementing CSS-based web layouts and designs for years now, for all of our clients. However, it continues to amaze us how many new implementations we walk into in the enterprise space that are very heavy with HTML layouts, and many of the implementations make simply no use at all of CSS.

I’d be happy to hear an argument the other way, but I believe CSS has more than proven itslef and solidified its prominent place in the web world. The fact is, in appearance, function, development time, and maintenance without CSS, I wouldn’t even bother mentioning it.

Oracle + Sun = Layoffs?

AshokIndustry Trends, News and Updates1 Comment

In the past, there has been acquisition synergy, which sometimes meant moderate layoffs. Acquisition in this economy, for companies the size of Oracle and Sun, may broaden the definition of “moderate” layoffs a bit. In order to make this Oracle’s most successful acquisition ever (as Oracle’s president has predicted), layoffs may become an important — more so than normal — part of the acquisition synergy.  With less buyers than there were a year ago, there is only so much revenue that cross-selling and innovative product releases will earn.  Management will be making the hard decisions on what/who stays and what/who … Read More

alter table, add column – Oracle Example Syntax

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Following is simple example syntax for adding a column to an Oracle table using “alter table” SQL: 1 2 ALTER TABLE [my_table_name] ADD [my_column_name] [my_data_type];ALTER TABLE [my_table_name] ADD [my_column_name] [my_data_type]; A simple example would be: 1 2 ALTER TABLE employee ADD tps_reports_completed NUMBER;ALTER TABLE employee ADD tps_reports_completed number;

Oracle Skips Earth and Buys Sun!

AshokIndustry Trends, News and UpdatesLeave a Comment

Move over, for now, IBM…Oracle has taken its place as the buyer of Sun.  This may be one of the most compelling acquisitions in recent Oracle times.  In Oracle’s press release, President Safra Catz was quoted saying: “…This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined.” For implementation architects and consultants, Oracle gets one step closer to total enterprise domination.  With Oracle’s own Linux and now Solaris, the days of Oracle and OS-vendor finger pointing are numbered.  On the core … Read More

Google Apps SSO and SAML

AshokNews and Updates1 Comment

M&S has taken our years of Identity Management with products from companies like Oracle to integrate with Google’s popular “Google Apps” offering.  By leveraging an existing Identity Management infrastructure, organizations can seamlessly integrate with Google Apps assets like calendar, mail, documents, sites, and more without requiring their users to login, let alone even have any knowledge of Googe Apps usernames/passwords. M&S is comfortable with the SAML protocol that Google relies on and can implement an appropriate handshake with a variety of tools and languages, including Java, .NET, PHP, and Perl. Contact us if you are an existing Google Apps Premier … Read More