Inge Meeuwsen (Toyota Belgium, see picture below) gave a detailed talk on their upgrade path of their Oracle e-business suite (EBS).

Next, Rudy Verlinden (IT Manager ERP and BI at Telenet) provided a testimonial on their consolidation process from different Oracle databases onto Oracle EXADATA. After some tests on Netezza, Teradata and Oracle, the latter solution was chosen for implementation.

Next, David Moons and Lieve Bruggeman (Oracle Belgium, see picture below) talked about Fusion TAP, a mobile CRM & HRM application of Oracle Fusion for tablets and smartphones. They gave a demo of Fusion Mobile Expenses (youtube video) to enter expenses on-the-fly. Also a youtube demo was shown of Oracle Voice which allows you to use (Siri-like) talk commands into your mobile equipment like create a task, select a customer, enter due date, sync this with your outlook, enter opportunity details. Fusion ERP implementations are Financials, Procurement and Project Portfolio. Available interfaces for Oracle Fusion Mobile are: FUSE for laptops, TAP for tablets, APPS for smartphones. The Fusion TAP is part of the Fusion license so no additional costs for the company. These applications run both on Apple iOS and on Android.

1. Functionalities for HCM (Human Capital Management): See YouTube videos below:

2. Functionalities for CRM:

Next, Markus Michalewicz (Senior product manager Oracle RAC, see picture below) took the stage to talk about the new Oracle database release 12c (historically: 9i stood for Internet enabled, 10g & 11g for GRID enabled, 12c for CLOUD).

The database has received 3 new focus areas: Big Data with Hadoop connector, firmware for better performance of EXA-machines, Public/Private Cloud computing. In Oracle’s timeline we see a clear evolution toward cloud computing: ASM as storage cloud, instance caging in order to run several instances on the same machine, RAC clusterware to divide one large server into multiple small servers, IO Resource Mgt for IO prioritization so not only the jobs but also the IO doesn’t stagnate. The only challenge left to overcome in a Cloud is reducing the number of databases. The great innovation Oracle made here was creating a database container, which behaves at the outside like a large database and could contain hundreds of smaller databases, creating a kind of pluggable DB because the database is not anymore identified by the SID but has become a multi-instance service (=virtualization of pluggable databases).  Because all embedded databases could share memory and I/O it becomes very easy to combine ERP, CRM and DW specialized databases into the same database container. Updating/patching the DB container brings all embedded databases on the same update level. The only pitfall is that all contained databases have to be of the same release. This means that migrating a database into the container causes a migration by using a datapump export of this database and importing the filedump (collection of SQL statements freed from any structure and constraints) into the container while changing the release to 12c.

Performance tests proved this technology to use 6 times less hardware and was at the same time 5 times more scalable. Test runs have been done with up to 250 DB’s in the same DB container scheduling each DB with high/low priority depending of the user level. It is also possible to give the DB container different usages like a production/standby/development container. The latter gives us the possibility to do real world tests. Due to the total isolation of the embedded DBs in the container it makes security breaches between different DB’s impossible so that companies can run their critical data in harmony next to each other. By issuing different types of compression it was possible to solve the storage challenge for large databases. The compression layout is visualized in a so-called heat map, which indicates by its color red, yellow or blue the type and size of the storage. The new Enterprise Manager Cloud Control gives you an overview of what is going on in the container and enables even multiple containers. Next to the extreme isolation factor the security challenge has received a lot of new concepts like: Preventive (encryption, data masking, multi-factor authorization), Detective (monitoring, firewall DB, auditing), Administrative (Life-cycle Mgmt, DB performance Mgmt, DB Cloud Control).

Next, Richard Gersthagen (see picture below) talked about Private and Public Cloud. The Oracle Cloud transforms the way we do business: Companies do not just run applications but rather deliver services to users/customers. Because users/customers will only consume good services with high usability they will pick the best on the internet and not necessarily your company services. At the end this may shake out your own ICT department if the services are not pleasing your own employees. This is why Oracle is making ready-made services picked from their multiple ERP packages. With the EXA servers they provide the IaaS, with their containerized database you get a new feature DBaaS (Database as a Service : define your DB-type single/RAC, chargeback info, quota monitoring, self service portal is APEX so users can personalize their own portal) and finally with the Fusion applications that run on laptop/tablets/smartphones you get the SaaS. Life-cycle of the Cloud: setup  build/test/deploy  monitor  optimize  chargeback. The Oracle Cloud can be used locally as Private Cloud or Public externally or even mixt in an hybrid configuration were you keep the critical applications and data in house.

Next, Frits Hoogland talked about the new EXADATA hardware X3-8, which offers 7 times better performance at the same price. Internal memory has been upped to 256Gb and Flash memory to 400Gb. Important to remember is that the software layers are split in 2 parts: one for firmware, drivers & kernel and one for libs, shell, RAC & database. A special optimizer mode BP8 has been introduced which enables to read data with 128 blocks at once. For this they reused the former Oracle Data Appliance (ODA: available with min. 2 cores) that was configured through templates.


Next, Pieter Kranenburg presented the new EXALOGIC hardware (see picture below). Characterized by much less storage in comparison with ExaDATA, infiniband and lots of computing blades. Apparently they are putting their own SUN company aside because Oracle is cooperating now with Fujitsu on new high performance computing modules for the near future. As software they are reusing Oracle EM12C Opt Center, now called Cloud Mgt Virtualization, Exalogic Control (manage hardware, monitoring, network config to isolate networks for security purposes), Performance Optimization and Cloud Control (Exabus & Traffic Director).


Next, Dirk Van Looveren (Oracle Belgium, see picture below) talked about Fusion Applications. Fusion middleware was already introduced in 2010 and is now at Release 5. They are using the best of breed out of their multiple ERP software (Siebel, Peoplesoft, Hyperion, JD EDWARDS, EBS etc) for their Saas suite that is being used now by 500 customers. They are also preparing specialized verticals (e.g. Telco, Retail). Fusion Oracle offers a complete Enterprise Suite, business intelligence and communications with social networks, all what a company nowadays can wish for. They also simplified the Business Processes with the cloud environment, mobile platform and rich user interface. For example, their CRM package provides: sales & marketing, customer service/support, customer HUB, eCommerce, Knowledge mgt. The Business Process Modeler/Architect allows you to design your complete business/taskflow graphically and compose web services as one application without writing one line of source code!

Finally, Luc Bors talked about ADF. A great step ahead for Oracle Developers are the new ADF features (build once deploy anywhere) :

ADF Essentials : free and is not a subset of ADF because you have the same features as with the full version ($5000), you only may not use certain parts commercially (no security, mobile, webservices, data controller, SOA, Enterprise bus, desktop integration). So very tempting for developers because if they can make a nice application the company will pay the bill anyway! The ADF-mobile mobile runs on both platforms Apple and Android. New features are new 3D data visualization, taskflow testing, Robots, Speech recognition on smartphone platform.

ADF EMG: new taskflow tester 11.1.1.6.15 works with Jdeveloper 11.1.1.6 and the tester 11.1.2.15 works with newest Jdeveloper 11.1.2.3. It manages the flow of applications and  screens (record/play), does the packaging and makes reusable libraries for further development.

ADF Mobile: hands-on lab at OOW-2012 (15 persons/session), HTML5 interface, animation support, interactive DVT, local storage MySQL access, close to native language (e.g. uses Objective C for iPhone), email client, GPS functionality, phonegap (data control for camera), works on all mobile platforms (SDK for Android, WIN-CE, MacOS, Objective C etc), AMX = JSF-like but with HTML5 interface (SOAP + REST).

ADF Visualization: TEEMAP (view data hierarchically with color + size  e.g. heatmap of DB12C), SUNBURST (3D pie component with drag/drop), TIMELINE (Facebook), DIAGRAM (for representing complex network layouts in Javascript = browser independent), PIE (pie chart that groups several data nodes), 9-BOX (e.g. performance matrix in fusion HCM).

ADF ROBOT: command language for StorageTEK SL150, VOICE recognition to talk to your application instead of typing.

ADF ARCHITECT: community of architects with best practices and code samples.


We are continuing to monitor what’s going on in the Oracle universe so as to incorporate important new developments into the curriculum of our students in the Master of Science in Business Engineering/Marketing Engineering and the Master of Science in Marketing Analysis.