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
Oracle Skips Earth and Buys Sun!
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
Simple Explanation of SOA
I know many of our readers already know what SOA is — in fact, many of you probably have your own definition. However, the below is a nice animation that helps provide a simple explanation that a business user can appreciate.
SOA is dead? Sure, the same as Java is dead.
There is a LOT of hoopla lately over an article proclaiming that SOA is Dead. Of course, the title is attention-grabbing and not an accurate representation of the article’s content (the author even suggests that “SOA” is dead, but not “service-oriented architecture”). None-the-less, you can’t have it both ways; you can’t label something as an “obituary” and then go on to write how the right arm will still work if you prop it up at 45 degrees and twist it three times. So, I will simply state that the author is wrong and suggest a more accurate picture of the … Read More
Data Validation and Cleansing – Technology, a New “Mouse Trap”
You lie in wait, looking for your prey, it approaches, and looks around. You spring the trap and
find the spoils of war…the dreaded %20
Ok, maybe not all that exciting, but it brings up an important problem in data conversion and in
application development projects. Namely the importance of input data trapping and input
validation.
Oracle BPA Suite and SOA Suite – Combined
Oracle has made some great strides with their BPM and SOA offerings. For M&S, combining process and technology has become even more exciting with Oracle’s tools. For the first time, Oracle has made it possible for our consultants to more easily bring together best of breed solutions (IDS Scheer’s ARIS and Oracle SOA) and leading industry standards (BPMN, BPEL, and BPEL4People) to our implementations, which typically involve some level of process management/improvement and technology automation (workflow and reporting). Following is a quick image of how each person in an organization fits into our approach when combining process with technology using … Read More
Oracle XE and APEX: Initial Impressions
It seems that Oracle has seen a need for, and developed a product for the entry level business that doesn’t require a huge investment in hardware or software knowledge. This is Oracle APEX, or APplication EXpress. At first glance it seems to be a streamlined melding of other Oracle products (I can see bits of Application Server and Portal in it) It requires much less knowledge of PL/SQL or Oracle Architecture to build applications, which makes it ideal, doubly for getting people into using Oracle Products. The better part is it will work with any Oracle Database install version after 9.2 without issue, including a little gem called XE.
Oracle Database Express Edition (currently version 10g) is a wonderful little setup. Designed for…
Oracle BAM Sucks, For Now
Our team has been working with BAM since Oracle took it on (we rolled out BAM reports in 2007). The product is certainly “interesting” and has some cool auto-refresh capabilities that make for a nice demo to executives. However, there are a few pieces to the overall reporting puzzle that, well, leave me a little puzzled… No ability to write reports that query an RDBMS or even the BAM data objects — I hope you like simple query logic. No ability to manipulate data in the BAM data objects: I just want to run an update statement people. Filters that … Read More