(This is a reprint of an article published in the UKOUG's Select magazine early this year)
When talking about Oracle Forms and JDeveloper, one Oracle personality stands out among others - long time blogger Grant Ronald from Oracle Corporation UK. Grant has for a long time “pimped” Oracle Forms and its big brother JDeveloper at Oracle events and user groups events around the world. His popularity is shown by his blog receiving on average 2000 hits per day. Lately, to reassure Oracle customers that Oracle intends to keep on supporting Oracle Forms and show that Forms has a future inline with JDeveloper, Grant has been responsible for the Oracle’s Forms Modernization message.
Chris Muir from SAGE Computing Services Australia conducted the following Q&A session with Grant to get the low down and latest on Forms and JDeveloper, as well as a little about Grant himself.
CM: What role do you currently play at Oracle and what does your day job entail?
Grant Ronald: Well, my title says “Group Product Manager” and the products I cover are Oracle Forms and Oracle JDeveloper. As a Product Manager you are responsible for the success of the products in your area. That encompasses everything from working with developers on features, the marketing department on campaigns or delivering presentations at events like Oracle World. In the morning you can be rolling your sleeves up and getting into code with a developer, and in the afternoon you can be meeting with the CTO. It’s that varied.
CM: How did you get into this Oracle gig anyhow? What’s your background at Oracle and computing in general?
Grant Ronald: Back in the early ’80s, home computing was slowly starting to take off with computers like the Sinclair Spectrum, Vic20 and BBC home computers, and it seemed like a new an innovative field to get involved in when I left school. So I got my degree in Computing Science then joined a small IT outfit in the UK that eventually got consumed by EDS. It was a pretty typical development role for about seven years, mainly focused on military applications, and my last job was designing, developing and leading the team for the development of the user interface for a military email system.
This took me up to 1996 when I fancied a change, and Oracle was looking for people with development experience on Unix and Motif in their support organization. So I joined Oracle Support where I eventually headed up the group who supported the local EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) teams in Forms, Reports and Discoverer. Given that I was working closely with the Oracle Product Management team in this role, I was eventually persuaded to make the jump into Oracle Development!
CM: Ok, now for some tough questions worthy of any Q&A: You’re currently known via your blog for discussions on Oracle development including Forms and SOA, and presentations in Oracle Developer Days around the world. Previously you were also known for you work on JDeveloper. Why the change? Has Oracle internally panicked about the impression (my emphasis) customers are getting that Oracle has killed Forms, and now the need for Forms advocates?
Grant Ronald: There has not really been a change. The thing is, we’ve never stopped talking about Forms. I’ve got the air miles and passport stamps to show that we were still presenting Forms at Oracle World, ODTUG (Oracle Development Tools User Group), UKOUG (UK Oracle User Group), DOAG (German Oracle User Group) and dozens of other events covering EMEA, APAC and the Americas.
The Forms OTN page is still a hive of activity: news, events, whitepapers and how-to’s. Maybe people thought we had stopped talking about Forms because we were also talking about other technologies as well. Ten years ago if you developed on an Oracle database then you pretty much used Forms, simple as that. But the world has changed and there are other things to talk about now. Which makes sense, if you think about it; there is more need and more demand to be talking about the “new” stuff, especially when it is evolving at such a rate.
CM: On discussing Forms and considering that some Oracle customers are confused on the future of Forms, can you outline Oracle’s commitment to Forms in terms of existing versions and Oracle Support?
Grant Ronald: I think the strongest statement we have is the fact that we published a statement of direction five years ago and that statement remains true today. We’ve always said that we are committed to Forms and that there have been no plans to desupport it. That line has never changed. Regarding support, we’ve recently just extended the support date for 10.1.2 (the latest release of Oracle Forms) and Forms 11g is in development, having already had positive reviews from our beta testers. So we are lengthening the support dates, we are working on the next release and we are also discussing enhancements and features for post 11g. I think that’s all good news.
CM: Could the problem with Oracle Forms just be an image problem? It’s never been known for sexy development (a’la grey screens of boredom), and especially now that the web world, web rich clients, AJAX etc have taken off.
Grant Ronald: The sweet spot for Oracle Forms has always been the ability to rapidly develop rich, transactional business applications. So you see Oracle Forms applications in your government offices, airlines and bank back-offices etc. The need for visual “bells and whistles” is less at the fore than, for example, an online shopping application where a user makes a snap decision, often based on visual aesthetics, as to whether they will use the site.
But there is nothing to stop you pushing the boundaries of the visual aspects of Oracle Forms. We have customers who are using some of the features of Oracle Forms, like PJCs and Java beans, to really push the boundaries of the Forms UI. Like this story. So there is nothing to stop you modernizing your Forms application, starting with an update of the user interface.
CM: So what plans do Oracle have in addressing Forms customers?
Grant Ronald: We are continuing to present at all the major events and user groups. In addition, we’ve launched a focus page. This includes recorded webcasts on Forms strategy, calling web services from Forms and Forms new features. There are also white papers and customer stories as well. This is also being backed up by a roadshow which to date has hit nearly 20 countries.
For those Forms customers who are taking a step into the Java world, we have a dedicated site on OTN as well as dedicated developers guides, books and Oracle University courses.
CM: Consider an Oracle shop with a large legacy Oracle Forms application that is running well but in a desupported version of Forms. Should they have any intentions of upgrading their Forms installs and what are the risks if they don’t?
Grant Ronald: Our roadmap for Forms customers is “upgrade and integrate”. So the first point to consider is upgrade. There are, of course, benefits of upgrading but you also have to consider the risk of not upgrading: running your business applications on desupported software that is neither security nor bug patched, or being certified on newer OS or database versions. Are you managing the risk that some piece of this stack may change and destabilise your applications (e.g. a forced O/S upgrade), or are you just hoping that this software tower will hold up with no means of support. It’s your call.
Which takes us to the next point: integration. By web deploying your Forms on the application server, you are positioning yourself on a platform on which you can integrate both your legacy applications, and new services and applications.
By following the “upgrade and integrate” roadmap, you can limit the risk to your business applications while still positioning yourself for your long-term strategic goals.
CM: Consider an Oracle shop with a large amount of SQL and PL/SQL programmers who are cognisant in Forms. Which Oracle development technology should they pick for maintenance and extension of the existing system: Forms, Apex or JDeveloper/ADF?
Grant Ronald: The simplest answer is really to pick the technology/tool that suits you best. If you are extending your existing Forms application it may be that you build new business logic in the database that could be shared between Forms, Java and Apex applications. Or you might decide that you really want to exploit the power of Java and so JDeveloper and ADF would be a natural choice. Many customers are closely aligned with Oracle’s business applications and so the Oracle Fusion technology stack may drive the choice of development tool. I try to discourage customers to think in binary terms when choosing tools. The reality is that you will probably have a mix.
CM: You mention that JDeveloper and ADF would be the natural choice for an Oracle developer. Why?
Grant Ronald: As I mentioned earlier, I look after Oracle Forms and Oracle JDeveloper. One reason for this split in roles is to bring my 4GL Forms experiences into JDeveloper and Oracle ADF. When I first joined the JDeveloper team I was amazed how developers were willing to write lines of code for common actions that I set with the click of a checkbox in Forms. Part of my job is to ensure that the kind of rich features a Forms developer takes for granted are implemented in JDeveloper and Oracle ADF.
JDeveloper and Oracle ADF is also a natural choice because it’s the route our own Applications Division is taking. Our next generation Fusion applications are being built using JDeveloper and ADF. So, as the technology choice for Oracle’s own Fusion Applications, the technology is built with the Forms/Database and PL/SQL developers in mind. No other tool or framework can make this claim.
CM: What skills do you see a Forms developer needing in moving to ADF, and what approach do you suggest to a development team in minimising this learning curve?
Grant Ronald: There is a learning curve in moving to any new technology but with JDeveloper and ADF we are really smoothing out that learning curve and lowering the barrier at which you can start to become productive.
Of course, the bottom line is that you will need some Java knowledge, but how much depends on how far you want to get below the covers and customize the behaviour of the framework.
With an overview of ADF and some basic Java language skills, you can go a long way: building business services, validation, page flow, rich UI interaction, LOVs, graphs – stuff that you couldn’t even consider if you weren’t using ADF.
But if you have made a strategic choice to develop on the Java platform, I’d expect you to still have some members of your team who have a more advanced knowledge of the platform so they can make architectural decisions and set up best practices. We are also working on giving you the learning aids to get up to speed. We have developed a number of Oracle University courses specifically targeted at the Forms audience moving to Java. There are a number of books already published and more in the pipeline that are aimed at opening up the platform. And of course, we have a dedicated focus page on OTN and the essential ADF developer guides for 4GL developers.
CM: Recently you’ve been focusing on SOA technology integration with Forms. Why advantages do you see this combination providing? What challenges do Forms programmers face with integration?
Grant Ronald: The benefits of a service based approach are already well documented: loosely coupled, reusable implementations of business processes gives a more flexible, agile architecture that is better aligned to the business.
Much of the work we are doing with Oracle Forms now is to allow your existing Forms application to hook into the SOA world. The ability to call out to web services and for those services to call back asynchronously is one example.
CM: Grabbing your crystal ball, given your long-term experience in development, where do you see Oracle development in 10 years time?
Grant Ronald: I think the clearest view of the future can be seen in Oracle’s own business applications. Oracle’s Applications Division have upgraded to the most recent version of Forms, while looking to exploit the benefits of a services oriented architecture and a standards based platform. Using JDeveloper and Oracle ADF, they are taking developers from a background including Forms, PL/SQL and Peopletools, and making them productive on the Java platform.
I think this gives the clearest indication of where Oracle development is heading and I think there is a great comfort in knowing that the technology choices you are making are the ones Oracle is betting its business applications on as well.
CM: Finally, moving out of the Oracle arena, what keeps you kicking out of work? I know you play in a band.
Grant Ronald: I play a bit of keys in a band, and that mixed with a few weekends out biking helps balance out all the fun I have at Oracle!
Showing posts with label Interviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interviews. Show all posts
Monday, 8 June 2009
Wednesday, 16 May 2007
Oracle RDBMS Q&A with Doug Burns
In an ongoing series of articles, Chris Muir chats to Oracle blogger and well known UK presenter Doug Burns who maintains his slightly off-center Oracle DBA blog (check out the stuffed toys!?). Doug, who holds 9i DBA certification, has 16 years experience as an Oracle DBA and is a member of the expert Oaktable group. His opinions, insights and experience in the Oracle arena are held in considerable regard by the Oracle community.A) Well, I've had Tigger for years because Tiggers are wonderful things, aren't they? My sister was probably the original inspiration for that because she used to be Tigger-crazy. Then my mum bought me Flatcat as one of my Christmas presents five or so years ago and things have expanded steadily since then. They're all real, they all have their own personalities and there's much more chat about them around my house than I could justify psychologically. As for their integration into the blog, there's a slightly serious message in there that people can take themselves a little too seriously online. I'm also not the most photogenic gentleman, so I reckon a picture of Flatcat is more welcome than one of me.
Q) Now that we've cleared that up, what was your original reason for blogging about Oracle?
A) I was working on a Data Warehouse implementation and every time I googled for related information, I would find myself looking at Mark Rittman's blog, so he was the original inspiration. I'd been aware of blogs a long time ago, via The Guardian's IT pages, but thought they sounded stupid! Then I saw Howard Roger's and Niall Litchfield's blogs and when I noticed that my hosting provider offered a (rather poor) blogging tool, I thought I'd give it a whirl. Oh, and I was pre-Tom Kyte. Not by much, but that's *very* important ;-)
Q) How has the blog changed from your original expectations?
A) I actually thought I'd be writing about Oracle much more often. I may return to that idea one day.
Q) Can you describe your average working day?
A) Well, I've just started a new role with the Pythian Group in
It would be fair to say that it's very unusual to leave computers alone for more than an hour or two, unless I'm out of the house.
Because I'll be working in a different timezone from Pythian head office, I expect my near future to be a day filled with overnight pages, as I try to stop the Canadian employees being dragged out of their beds.
Seriously, though, every site I work at is completely different to the others as far as daily activities are concerned.
Q) How did you first get involved in computing, and later the Oracle arena?
A) Oh, that's quite a long story – buckle up! When I was at school, one of my friends got a Sinclair ZX80 so we messed around with that a bit in BASIC. Then, the first Christmas after I left school, my mum and dad bought me a ZX81. As I was on the dole (unemployed) I would just sit in the house, playing around with this thing, hand-disassembling commercial games and taught myself Z80 assembly language. Eventually I stumbled into a job as a games programmer and stuck at that (somewhat unsuccessfully) for the next 3 or 4 years. Then I was on the dole again (this was Britain in the '80s, so I wasn't alone), then a spell working with a PC dealership, writing dBase III Plus and Foxbase programs for clients (I couldn't believe people got paid for something so easy!). This led to a job with a finance company writing some C and Clipper. While there, my team lead and I pitched an internal bid for a new direct marketing system, based on Oracle 6 and AIX on one of the just-released RS6000 servers and we were successful. That was in 1990 and I've been working with Oracle since then.
Q) Are there any skills you learnt in your earlier career that still assist you today and are sorely missed by new graduates?
A) Despite the fact that I never work at anything like such a low level these days (and it would be next to impossible given the environmental complexity of modern systems), a grounding in Assembly Language meant that I've always retained important basic concepts about how computer systems work. If I'd started from a very high level, using Forms for example, I would assume that everything 'just works' and take the underlying technology for granted.
Although I'm a bit insecure about it, I was probably lucky to be self-taught too. It took me longer to get there, but I didn't have to learn as many useless things to satisfy a college examiner. There are some things that I'm much worse at, through lack of formal training, but by the time most people had left college, I'd already written a couple of games and it would be safe to say I see computing as a vocation, not just the job that pays the most these days.
Q) Given your 16 years experience with the Oracle RDBMS, what do you think the strengths of the product are?
A) The fundamental architecture - transaction and concurrency model, backup and recovery techniques and, even if it can be frustrating at times, the optimiser. I think Oracle's RDBMS is a pretty impressive design that gets a lot of things right and whenever I don't know exactly how something works, it usually ends up working in roughly the way I would have guessed, based on my knowledge of other areas. i.e. It's reasonably consistent and stands up well to new extensions.
Q) And its weaknesses?
A) Not so much from a personal point of view but, like Unix, the fact that so much detail is exposed is both a strength and a weakness. I wouldn't want a 'self-managing database' because I think it's an impossible target, but there is a very steep learning curve and there are times when things are more difficult than they should be. That's largely based on watching new users struggling through courses, wondering why they need to understand so much.
Maybe Oracle XE will break down some of the barriers, but I still think you're going to need to understand how the damn thing works if you want to be a DBA
Q) Core-tech Oracle skills tend to be divided into DBAs and developers. Many (including the author in jest) like to point out the divide between the 2 groups. Any comments on this divide, its impact on a successful project, and why DBAs need a good whack on the head?
A) Even as someone who has also jokingly encouraged the divide, it is a bit of a nonsense. All of the best people that I've worked with or met in the user community tend to be a bit of a mix of both, I've done a few development jobs myself and came from a development background. I'd also put my SQL and PL/SQL skills up against any of the developers I've worked with.
Then again, those who lean towards being DBAs have always been the best! (Until that pesky Tom Kyte popped his head out of his cubicle.)
Q) Many DBAs are carefully avoiding any involvement with the middle tier software. Do you consider the administration of Oracle Application Server to be part of a DBA's role, and if not, who should be doing it?
A) It depends on the type of DBA and on the type of environment. For DBAs who are very technically-orientated, they could and should include it in their skills. I was involved in writing an App Server course at Learning Tree and, frustrating and bug-ridden though the product was, it's undoubtedly something to get your teeth in to, a server product with complexity to spare, so I think it's a good fit for the technical DBA. If however, you're a database design and minor maintenance DBA, then you've no chance of ever getting your head round App Server!
It also matters what type of site you work at. If you have separate Operating System, Database, Storage and Networks teams, then it probably makes sense to have a separate App Server support team because it requires equal levels of skill, time and commitment. If you're working at a smaller site, you're probably going to have to muck in and get your hands dirty.
Personally, I've found I never have the time to dedicate to it, but I'd like to do more.
Q) How have the management tools provided in Oracle 10g changed the DBA's workload?
A) Personally they haven't made much difference because I'm still a slave to the command line, I'm afraid. I have played around with the various management tools but the problem for most DBAs is that you're extremely unlikely to work at a site that uses 10g exclusively, so you need to work with the lowest common denominator when it comes to management tools. I think that might be changing slowly, though, if only Oracle don't change the product set too often – it makes it impossible to settle on anything.
Q) What do you consider to be the most useful database tuning tool?
A) I think AWR, ASH and ADDM are potentially the most useful database tuning tools but, again, it's difficult to focus on them because I don't just work with 10g databases and Oracle's licensing model doesn't help! As long as that's the case, event 10046 traces will always be useful but I also use Statspack regularly when I want to get to the bottom of a problem quickly. If that doesn't work, I usually end up using tracing.
Q) What is your experience of the adoption rate of ASM, and how do you see its future?
A) Interestingly, I've had two very different experiences in the space of the past month or two. I just left a big enterprise site in the
Now I've moved to a company that supports a lot of RAC installations on Linux and they use ASM widely, That's partly because of Oracle's Standard Edition licensing policy for RAC, that encourages it, and partly because they don't want to fork out for something like Veritas Clustering or Polyserve. I haven't been involved long enough to know how successfully it is, but I haven't heard any major complaints yet.
Q) Oracle RDBMS 11g announced with fanfare at the 2006 Oracle Open World marks another milestone in database technology. Do you think it's an evolution or revolution in database technology? Any specific features?
A) I agree with a lot of people that there isn't a great 'wow factor' about the release, but if the version control features work as advertised, I think they could prove very useful for the day-to-day drudgery of the DBA's life, particularly development DBAs, who spend a lot of time restoring and rebuilding test environments and running release scripts. Definitely evolutionary, though, but I have no problem with that. Revolutions are for kids Web 2.0 apps, not for your primary data store.
Q) Are there any features in Oracle that are under utilised in your opinion, by DBAs and separately developers?
A) DBAs – 10046 event tracing (still), resumable storage, parallel execution (for data loads and index rebuilds) (I had to include that one ;-)), dbms_scheduler/dbms_job. Let's face it, most of us, me included, use a fraction of what we've paid for.
Developers – if they're not dedicated database programmers, just about everything! Are there any features most developers *do* use? It may not be true of the people likely to be reading this, but I find that most developers don't have the first idea about the extensive functionality at their disposal for free.
Q) What areas do you believe are the biggest frustration for DBAs in maintaining Oracle databases and do you see 11g addressing this in any form?
A) One area that's an absolute nightmare is patch management. I've had this discussion with various people in the community and, whilst I understand why everyone talks about regular patch maintenance and I'm not arguing about the need for it, does anyone in their right mind think that a majority of sites are really patching all of their databases every quarter? Yeah, right. Until Oracle make patching much, much easier and less disruptive (OEM Grid Control looks promising), security holes are going to exist left, right and centre and the fact is that most companies are utterly dependent on their firewalls. Whether you believe that's adequate or not is for debate.
Q) From your blog on interviewing potential DBAs, you have views on the skillsets they require. What do you think makes a successful DBA in today's IT market?
A) Well, to start off with a facetious answer to your specific wording – the ability to lie effectively on your cv/resume. That seems to do the trick!
More sensibly, I value maturity above all else. When I say maturity, I suppose I really mean responsibility and it's absolutely nothing to do with age. When DBA teams are growing and the number of databases we support is growing even faster, there's no room for cowboys. All they do is screw things up for the entire team and ruin our reputation with developers and the business.
That, of course, is on top of them knowing the basic skills of the job well, which should be a given, but doesn't seem to be these days. Having to look everything up on Google before you do it is winging it, in my opinion. There should be some things you just know, because you are supposed to be a professional technician.
Q) Has the role and concerns of the DBA changed in the last 10 years, and where do you see it going in the future?
A) I've always thought that the DBA role was predominantly managing the environment and developing strategy because the day-to-day stuff is so easy. The product is a lot more complex than it was, though, so it's difficult to know it as intimately as we might in the past, but there's much more information available on how it works. I don't think for a minute that new tools have made things much easier, they just mean we can support more databases per DBA.
Q) Moving on from the technology and focusing instead on Oracle Corporation. Recently Oracle Corporation has acquired organisations like PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel, changed their marketing message to Oracle Fusion, at what some would consider to the detriment of Oracle core technologies such as the RDBMS. Any comments?
A) Don't get me started! I suspect you might know my feelings on this subject already. There was a stage where I felt the UKOUG was becoming a Fusion user group and, given that the user base of all those products combined is a small fraction of the RDBMS user base, I'll do everything in my power to stop that happening.
I can understand why Oracle want to grow into these other areas for their corporate health but their corporate health is not my primary concern and I hope they don't lose focus on what they're good at – producing a damn good RDBMS.
Q) Oracle Support. Love it, or lump it?
A) I think I'm in the minority on this one because I think they do a good job. When I first started working with Oracle, I'd avoid phoning Support like the plague because you'd go through layer upon layer of analysts, trying to reach someone who knew more than you did. Now, whilst that's still happening, they've improved the process of data collection that you always need at the start of a service request and, although the layers are still there, I can deal with them electronically on line so it's not as disruptive. i.e. if I have to spend a day or two entering some details in order to reach the right level of analyst, I don't worry too much about that. Put it this way, I'm glad I don't need to support such a complex product and I think it's too easy to moan about Support sometimes.
Then I remember how much companies are paying for Support and my sympathy wanes.
Q) In the past you've presented and supported Oracle user groups around the world including the UKOUG. What's your thoughts about Oracle user groups, their position and importance, their relationship with Oracle Corporation, and why you like to contribute to their success?
A) A strong user group is essential in my opinion. To have a strong user group, it's important that it's not organised for commercial gain, to argue the vendor's case too vehemently (although talking up the product is okay if it's a good one) or to be in the vendor's pocket financially. However, it's also important that the user group have a good relationship with the vendor so that there's a circle of feedback that will hopefully improve both the product and service for the customer.
In the end, we all run into problems and it's good for users to be able to get together, share their experiences and knowledge and passion for the software. I'd encourage as many people as possible to become involved. It's a lot of fun and the more of us there are, the more we can achieve.
(This article is a reprint of the article I published in the quarterly AUSOUG Foresight magazine Autumn 07 edition. I'd like to extend my thanks to Doug Burns for agreeing to the interview, and Penny Cookson
Wednesday, 24 January 2007
E-Business Suite Q&A with Steven Chan
In an ongoing series of articles, Chris Muir chats to Oracle blogger Steven Chan, Director of the Oracle Applications Technology Group. Steven's blog is one of the few Oracle Applications blogs and a strong source of the technology directions for Oracle's E-Business Suite. Beyond his blog Steven is responsible for integrating components such as Oracle Application Server into the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i technology stack. In addition to working with new technology integrations, Steven manages technology adoption programs with selected E-Business Suite customers.
Q) What is your principal role at Oracle?
A) My primary responsibility managing Early Adopter Programs for selected Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack components and advanced configurations. These programs allow selected customers to work with certain configurations or software before they’re released to the general customer community.
For example, I recently ran an Early Adopter Program for integrating Oracle Application Server 10g with the Oracle E-Business Suite. This was a massive 20-month program involving over 260 registered customers worldwide, five interim releases, and Oracle Support and Consulting staff in all geographic regions.
A) I’m part of various virtual development teams assembled to build, test and deploy different configurations internally, write or review documentation and training materials, and handle issues reported by anyone who uses it.
Practically speaking, this means that my day consists of bouncing between multiple projects, handling bugs, escalating issues, and generally making a nuisance out of myself. It’s the perfect job for someone with a short attention span. I’m also spending a lot of time, both on the clock and after hours, on my new Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Stack blog.
Q) Your blog is one of the few Oracle Applications blogs. Why did you start blogging about Oracle Applications?
A) A major part of my job is communicating with customers, partners, and Oracle staff on a broad variety of Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack topics such as security, deployment architectures, and our current and future certifications. I do a lot of customer presentations and webcasts, and I also participate in conferences like Oracle OpenWorld and OAUG Collaborate when possible.
This results in a lot of email -- up to 600 emails on a bad day. In self-defence, I started writing a Frequently Asked Questions document about Release 11i technology stack topics (Metalink Note 186981.1). To my surprise, my incoming email volumes turned out to be inversely proportional to the investment in these FAQs: the more time I spent writing about on a particularly topic, the less email I had to answer.
The problem with FAQs, though, is that they’re a one-way medium. Despite our best efforts, I was left with this sense that there’s a lot more that we can do to communicate what’s technically feasible, what’s coming soon, and to learn how customers use our products.
When Oracle endorsed blogging, it was inevitable that I’d try it to see if we could use it to broadcast technical news and tips… and help me reduce my email volumes further. It seems to be working so far, and I’ve been gratified by the huge upswell in traffic and positive response from readers.
Q) How has the blog changed from your original expectations?
A) I originally thought that I’d use it primarily to discuss advanced and special features of the Oracle E-Business Suite’s technology stack components. Reader feedback quickly revealed that there’s a huge, unfulfilled demand for much more basic information.
Also, I’d planned on occasionally publishing interesting tidbits on future versions such as Release 12. I’ve been surprised at the popularity of this topic. As of now, the screenshots of our new Release 12 user interface are far-and-above the most popular topics on the blog.
As one of the first Apps bloggers, I’d expected that this might be a lonely road. The sudden rush of popularity has prompted interest from my colleagues, so I’ve been lucky to convince a growing group of guest editors to contribute some excellent articles. Even at this early stage, we now have some fascinating pieces written by heavy hitters in Support and our own Technology Integration group, and I’m optimistic that I’ll pick up more editors along the way.
Q) How did you first get involved in Oracle Applications?
A) Through the back door during the dotcom boom; I’m not sure I’d get an interview today with the skills I had back then. I originally joined Oracle’s Consumer Packaged Goods group in 1998. When Oracle’s directions changed for that product, I was reorganised into the core group responsible for Release 11i’s Business Intelligence core infrastructure. Following that, I joined the Applications Technology Group, the core department responsible for the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, where I’ve been happily ensconced since. I consider this my dream job.
Q) Within the labour market there does appear to be a clear divide between Oracle professionals savvy with Oracle Applications, those who have little experience, and those who prefer to keep it at arms reach. Any comment from your own experience?
A) That seems accurate. The learning curve to become an Apps system administrator can be steep. Not only do you need to have Oracle DBA skills, you also need to understand the Oracle E-Business Suite, too. The amount of material can be sprawling and intimidating to a newcomer.
I’m very pleased to see that we’re now offering a new Oracle certification for Oracle E-Business Suite 11i Applications Technology Certified Professional Administrators. I think this will go a long way to making this area more accessible. In the meantime, Apps DBAs can enjoy a deserved premium for their hard-won skills in the marketplace.
Q) You've previously had responsibility for running Early Adopter Programs (EAP) in Oracle, specifically the integration of E-Business Suite (EBS) v11 with Oracle Application Server (OAS) 10g. How does an Early Adopter Program vary for E-Business than from other Oracle products?
A) There are some procedural differences in how we distribute and support Early Adopter Program software but our goals are the same, overall: to validate the field readiness of certified configurations with a range of selected customer environments. Specifically, we look carefully at Early Adopter Program participant feedback on our documentation, the ease of installation and configuration, and how well the software meets their needs.
Q) How do customers participate in these programs, and what level of support would an Early Adopter Program E-Business Suite customer expect?
A) Up until now, customers with specific requirements had to hunt down our Early Adopter Programs via Oracle Support or other indirect Oracle channels.
For example, we’re currently running an Early Adopter Program for replacing JInitiator with the native Sun Java plug-in on Windows desktops. Customers having problems with JInitiator are often informed by Oracle Support that an alternative solution is to register for this Early Adopter Program.
That Early Adopter Program is now profiled on our Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Stack blog. I hope to make it easier for Oracle E-Business Suite customers to find this kind of information centrally with this new option.
From a support perspective, Early Adopter Program customers can generally use these configurations in production environments, but this varies on a product-by-product basis.
Q) E-Business Suite v12, a major version with a range of modules, must take a huge amount of development effort from requirements gathering through to the shrink wrapping. Could you describe the effort required by the Oracle E-Business Suite team to bring all of this together?
A) A major release like this takes a coordinated effort across all Oracle divisions, including Development, Support, Consulting, Education, Marketing, and even our internal Applications IT group, which runs Oracle’s own Global Single Instance. They’re often the first users of our new releases.
In terms of scale, these releases involve a myriad of staff, including developers, product managers, QA engineers, documentation writers, support engineers, and our tireless infrastructure teams who update the various development and demonstration environments with every new code drop.
Q) Within E-Business
A) I’m not really qualified to comment on the functional aspects so I’ll restrict my comments to the technology side. I think that the inclusion of the Oracle 10gR2 Database and Oracle Application Server 10g in Release 12’s technology stack are major steps forward. On top of that, R12 will feature our new Project Swan user interface, the latest Oracle XML Publisher release, and optional integration capabilities with externally-installed Oracle Fusion Middleware products like Oracle Identity Management, Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Oracle Business Activity Monitoring. This adds up to a pretty exciting release from a technology perspective.
A) Some new database releases have historically taken a little longer than we’d like to certify with the Oracle E-Business Suite. This is partly due to our desire to deploy these releases in production at Oracle prior to making them generally available. There are certain windows where upgrading Oracle’s own Global Single Instance is avoided – for example, around quarterly or annual earnings periods.
Q) As one of the largest Oracle RDBMS and OAS users, the E-Business Suite development team must request significant features in the upcoming Oracle core products. What's your experience of how this relationship works between the different product teams and the outcome for the E-Business Suite?
Oracle is committed to success in the ERP industry, and we’re seeing an unprecedented focus on supporting Applications through advances in Middleware and Database technologies.
Q) Oracle has recently made a series of acquisitions in the Identity Management space. E-Business
Today, our designs explicitly consider customer requirements for third-party integration, all brokered through the abstraction and integration capabilities of Oracle Identity Management components packaged as part of Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Application Server. We no longer view the Oracle E-Business Suite as an isolated application, but rather as one part of your overall IT environment. This represents an enormous sea change in attitudes.
Q) Veteran applications developers know that customisation to E-Business Suite and other ERP solutions to suit customer business processes results in an upgrade headache as new versions of the software are released. Some developers now recommend when buying such software solutions, the business should change to match the vendor's package, not the other way around, a case of standards versus flexibility. Can you comment on how E-Business Suite is addressing this issue? Do you have any recommendations from your own experience on how customers should tackle this?
A) This is a classic conundrum, one that I’d be hard-pressed to address effectively within the limited scope of this interview. We draw a distinction between configuration, personalization, and extensibility. Configuration options allow you to define things like flexfields, personalisation options allow you to change the user interface look-and-feel and screen layouts declaratively, and our extensibility options allow you to add new functional flows or override existing business logic.
If you follow our published standards for these three areas, upgrades are generally less painful. But as with all generalisations of this type, your mileage may vary.
If your readers are looking for more information about this rich area, I’d recommend reading this.
Q) What area do you believe provides the biggest frustration to E-Business Suite users and how are Oracle addressing this?
From a technology stack perspective, I think we have two major challenges. Our biggest challenge is reducing the complexity and cost of managing the entire implementation, management, maintenance, and upgrade cycle. We’ve made significant progress in building out the Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Applications Manager capabilities for Release 11i, and I think you’ll be pleased with new features coming in Release 12.
Our second major challenge is keeping up with the ever-evolving set of architectural requirements that you’re faced with when implementing the Oracle E-Business Suite in the field. For example, only a handful of customers were concerned about SSL, DMZs, and Single Sign-On back when their Oracle E-Business Suite users were restricted to employees behind corporate firewall. Today, nearly all customers want to expose some aspect of the Oracle E-Business Suite externally, which triggers these requirements and others for things like reverse proxy servers, load-balancers, and federated security.
It’s a challenge to learn about your new requirements, which is why we encourage you to send us your feedback through the official OAUG channels.
Q) With the new exposure to the other ERP solutions acquired by Oracle, has this allowed the E-Business Suite team to investigate new ideas in the other products and introduce them to E-Business Suite? Any particular features you see as a priority?
A) If it were possible to graph the number of new concepts and approaches we’re working with, it would look like a step function with every new acquisition. The design process for Oracle Fusion Applications is underway now and everyone’s bringing together the best ideas from all of our acquired ERP solutions. It’s hard to single any one thing out as a priority, but the buzz of excitement around the new directions for Oracle Fusion is electrifying.
Q) There has been a large amount of hysteria about the Oracle Fusion marketing label and its impact on existing customer bases in the PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel and Oracle E-Business Suite arenas. What comments would you like to make from an E-Business Suite perspective?
A) We’ve tried to allay the fears of our customers by reassuring them that they’re not being placed on a forced march to upgrade to any release before they’re ready for it. We know you’ve invested heavily in your current implementations, so we’re giving you the responsibility for setting the pace of your deployment or migration schedule.
This is the goal of our Applications Unlimited program here. If anyone is even remotely concerned about being forced to upgrade or switch, they should contact their local Oracle account team for a discussion about how Applications Unlimited protects their investments.
Q) The
A) Indeed, the ripples of this legislation have been felt worldwide. The Oracle E-Business Suite has a large number of products and features that can be used to build a compliance system. There’s an extensive body of literature covering this here.
Q) SOA and BPEL are making major inroads into the ERP space. What future support will there be for BPEL, in particular Oracle's BPEL Process Manager in the E-Business Suite?
A) Release 11i can be used today with Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Oracle Business Activity Monitoring to support service oriented architecture designs. In addition, we offer a hosted Integration Repository here.
You’ll continue to be able to use Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Oracle Business Activity Monitoring with Release 12, and we’re planning to deliver the Integration Repository as part of the R12 Rapid Install. You should look out new web services and other integration capabilities coming in Release 12.
Q) With E-Business Suite v12 behind you, what features do you see in the next release? Any comments to users on how they can help influence this functionality?
A) There are a myriad ways of getting in touch with us, so you might be surprised at how little feedback we actually receive. We have over 30,000 Applications customers today, but strangely, we only hear from a relatively small fraction of you. Make yourself heard! Work with your local OAUG chapter on documenting your requirements and use-cases. If you can, come to Oracle OpenWorld and speak with us directly. Make your Oracle account team earn their licence revenues by reviewing your enhancement requests with them. Drop by our new blogs and post some comments. Although there are few certainties in life, it’s almost guaranteed that we won’t be able to respond to your concerns unless you tell us about them… so speak up!
Sunday, 14 January 2007
JDeveloper Q&A with Steve Muench
In an ongoing series of articles, three Australian JDeveloper developers quiz Steve Muench of Oracle about his past, how he made the transition from Oracle Forms to Java, and on the latest and greatest JDeveloper 10.1.3 release. As an Oracle Ace with a visible web presence and his own blog, Steve is a leading force behind JDeveloper. His articles are a first port of call in making effective use of Oracle's ADF technology stack. Having worked for Oracle on just over 15 years, his fingerprints can be found in many Oracle's solutions.
Q) What is your principal role at Oracle and can you describe your average working day?
A) The job title on my business card is “Consulting Product Manager”. I try to help customers be successful using JDeveloper and Oracle ADF, then take the information I learn by doing this and try to leverage it to provide customer-driven guidance for the planning and implementation of features all across the JDeveloper 10g product. While I might end up getting involved in decisions about any features in the product, I tend to focus primarily on the features that make J2EE application building easier for typical corporate business application developers who might have used Oracle Forms or other 4GL tools in the past.
The fun thing about my job is that there isn’t really a typical day. I might be writing a technical whitepaper one day, writing or reviewing a product specification the next, working on demos to illustrate best-practice coding techniques to customers, fine tuning the next instalment of my Oracle Magazine column, answering users questions on the OTN discussion forum, discussing bugs and resolutions with the developers, working with Worldwide Support to assist on a thorny customer situation, just to name a few of the most typical things. I’m also sometimes involved in doing product evangelization at Oracle Partner, customer, or user group events, but these days most of my customer interaction happens over the internet using the OTN discussion forums or Oracle Collaborate Suite’s iMeeting software. This allows me to interact with many more customers, developers, and support engineers in a day than I could if I would be physically travelling around.
Q) Your Blog along with your strong presence on OTN and Oracle events has made you an Oracle personality in recent years. Ever get recognized on the street?
A) After 16 years at Oracle, I definitely recognize a lot of customer faces when I attend events like OpenWorld or user groups, but I unfortunately don’t have any funny stories to tell about being recognized in the street. I started my blog in January 2003 out of my personal frustration of not having enough time to write a proper book on Oracle ADF. It was the second best thing I could think of to help get users information about making the most of Oracle ADF. There is a lot of leverage in putting something in writing so that people can teach themselves how to “fish”, so to speak. Before taking a job with Oracle in 1990, my original goal in life was to be a math teacher, so I love explaining complicated things to people in terms they can understand. The blog lets me do it as my time allows.
Q) Besides JDeveloper you are known for your work on Oracle Forms v4.x & v5.0. How did you go making the transition between the 2 technologies? Do you still think about problems in terms of Forms solutions?
A) My journey from Oracle Forms to Java had a 3-year interim “layover” in the world of object-oriented development working as the lead product manager on the Project Sedona development team. This was work we did at Oracle to pioneer a complete object-oriented development environment before Java appeared on the scene. We now think of it as a useful “research project” that was ahead of its time, since many of the ideas embodied in that project have reappeared in JDeveloper and Oracle ADF. My initial learning curve in moving from a relationally-minded developer to one who could think in objects happened during that project, so by the time we began reimplementing the Project Sedona ideas into what became JDeveloper and ADF, I was over that hump. I can’t say that I think like a Forms developer any more, but I do understand how Oracle Forms developers work and think from having worked so long with Forms before. I used this intuition to help guide the initial design of the Oracle ADF framework, working in tandem with Oracle Applications teams, and use it to help plan and drive future feature work to keep making areas of the product that are still complicated a little easier with every release. We began a focused education campaign in the last year on helping Forms developers get their footing in the J2EE world with lots of targeted technical content on OTN and Oracle Developer Days seminars around the world. We’ve been getting great feedback from this effort so far from existing Forms users who’ve been wanting to get started with J2EE for their next major projects.
Q) Can you give an idea on the JDeveloper team and size, how it is dispersed, how this affects(ed) the build process and delivering the end product.
A) The sun never sets on the JDeveloper team! We have over 150 people working in various roles on the product comprising (in no particular order): developers, development managers, QA engineers, build engineers, doc writers, product managers, customer evangelists, and usability engineers. We’re spread out in development centers in
Q) The JDeveloper team is actively visible on the OTN Forums and Oracle events around the world. What’s the goal behind this activity?
A) This is our primary opportunity to learn how customers use the product, what problems that have while getting started, and what they like and dislike about it. A good amount of our team members participate in the forum because they like this customer contact. One great thing that’s been happening over the last few years is that more and more our customers are helping each other in the forum, creating more of a true community feeling rather than just a place to ask questions of Oracle people exclusively. Often the customers who’ve been using our tools on a project for months will have unique insights that our daily use of the product wouldn’t give us. So it’s great to have both there in one of the most active discussion forums on OTN.
Q) Oracle and the JDeveloper team are actively involved in the Java Community Process with other key industry representatives to improve Java and J2EE. What’s your opinion on the success or failure of the collaborative process and Oracle’s input?
A) I think customers appreciate it when multiple vendors cooperate on designing a common standard and then compete on providing the best implementation of it. We’ve participated actively in many JCP expert groups, with driving roles most recently in the JSF, EJB 3.0, but with dedicated involvement in many others. It’s often a thankless job since it takes a lot of time to hammer out a good spec that’s been giving enough time to go through wide community review. I think the results have been overwhelmingly positive to date.
Q) For Java programmers questions about IDEs invoke a holly war between Eclipse and Netbeans. How do you think JDeveloper differentiates itself from these products?
A) We try to differentiate ourselves by providing an order of magnitude more end-to-end, integrated functionality, and since making JDeveloper 10g free in June of 2005, we try to make sure price is no longer a differentiator. With other free IDE’s, it’s up to you to scout out the collection of plug-ins you want to use and not all of them are free. When you plug them together, you can end up with functionality that doesn’t quite seem like it was built by the same company, since in fact, it wasn’t. JDeveloper 10g delivers the functional breadth of a tool like Visual Studio Enterprise Architect Edition, but for free and on an open deployment architecture.
Since Eclipse, NetBeans, and IntelliJ started with a sharp focus exclusively on the Java coding experience, until recently their code-focused development features like refactoring were more extensive than JDeveloper 10g’s. We’ve completely remedied this in our JDeveloper 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) product. We started by implementing the hard, enterprise features like the Oracle ADF framework, visual page design, built-in performance profiling, UML modelling, database design, and other features. These have taken years to get right to a totally integrated experience. It’s going to be arduous for these other players who started with the lower-level Java coding features to move “upmarket”, if you will, to provide a similar end-to-end experience for the corporate application developer.
Q) What comments would you make to traditional Forms developers with few Java or object oriented skills in making the leap to JDeveloper 10.1.3 for development? Do you believe the ease and usability of Oracle Forms development will be seen with a 3GL such as Java?
A) My advice would be to leverage the resources we’ve made available at the J2EE Application Development for Forms and Designer Developers site, read the back issues of my Oracle Magazine DEVELOPER:Frameworks column, attend one of our Developer Days seminars, and then pick a small, yet real-world application to build while they learn the ropes. We have numerous lessons focused specifically on helping Forms users grasp the concepts and working approach of JDeveloper/ADF. A developer with 15 years of experience in working with Oracle Forms often forgets that its taken them 15 years to learn all the ins and outs of the Forms product. The JDeveloper/ADF environment is consciously design to work a lot like the Forms design experience, and the features of the ADF framework handle all of the same things that the Forms runtime makes easy for developers in that product. I’m not saying there is no learning curve, by no means. But, due to the modular, consistent architecture of ADF, once you grasp the fundamentals, putting together the pieces is not as hard as it initially looks.
Q) JDeveloper 10.1.3 marks a significant milestone in the product’s history by moving away from UIX technology to the adoption of JavaServer Faces in Oracle’s own flavour ADF Faces. What decisions were made in deciding JSF was the best future for JDeveloper and its web developers?
A) Customers complain that the best practices for implementing web application UI’s on the J2EE platform have evolved too many times over the last years. First servlets, then JSP pages, then JSP Pages with tag libraries, then JSP pages married with Struts. Struts is also not the only game in town, so a thousand flowers have bloomed trying to build a better mousetrap. We built UIX because our own Oracle Applications development teams needed a higher-level, component-based, event-driven way to build rich, real-world web user interfaces with attractive and often complex, interactive behaviours. By working extremely hard as part of the JSF expert group to bring the expertise we gained by implementing UIX to the table, we were able to strongly influence the design and implementation of the JSF spec. This allowed us to redevelop UIX on top of an industry standard so our hundred or so components can now be used in any JSF-compliant IDE. Our strong support behind JSF reflects our conviction that it is a robust technology that should insure developers can learn it and stick with it for a long time to come. That said, we’ve also invested in improvements in our support for Struts because many, many users are using that today, so whether you initially start using JSF or wait a while longer and stay with Struts and JSP, we’ve got you covered with visual productivity features across the board.
Q) Besides ADF Faces and refactoring, what other new features do you see key to JDeveloper 10.1.3?
A) JDeveloper 10.1.3 has so many cool new features, it’s hard to pick just a few. We’ve improved code navigation, refactoring, team development, modelling, web services, web development, mobile development, Swing development, XML development, and database development. We’ve invested a lot of effort in the ADF framework layers to make working with all backend technologies easier, and made them work especially seamlessly with the new JSF view-layer technology, in addition to their existing support for JSP and Swing. 10.1.3 is really a huge step up for users in all areas of the product.
Q) The next versions of JSP, JSF and J2EE (now JEE) are around the corner. What changes do you envisage will occur to JDeveloper because of this?
A) We’re already supporting all of the latest standards in the 10.1.3 release, like JSF, J2SE 5.0, JAX-RPC web services, EJB 3.0, etc., so I don’t expect anything radical to be changing based on what you’ve mentioned in the future.
Q) There are frequent criticisms raised by beginner and experienced JDeveloper users, that documentation leaves something to be desired, incomplete JDocs with nothing but function names, cookie-cutter examples that through simplicity ignore the gotcha’s, and poor support from Oracle Support. How are these criticisms being addressed by the JDeveloper team?
A) We’ve provided meaty technical whitepapers and demos to supplement our online reference documentation, but it’s a fair point that one thing we’re missing is a proper developer’s guide that you can read cover to cover and get up to speed. We’re directly addressing this issue by providing two ADF Developer’s Guides in the 10.1.3 timeframe. These are readable manuals that cover the end-to-end development experience of using Oracle ADF in JDeveloper for building applications. One guide will focus on the experienced Java developer and one guide on the Forms/4GL developer. Each guide covers the same basic ground of building an end-to-end demo application and explains all the details that make it up, but the guides are separate to cater to the recommended business tier technologies for these two distinct audiences as well as to best cater to each group’s existing skillset. We’ll continue providing new Oracle by Example tutorials that have proven popular as well. We have a new “Cue Cards” system in the 10.1.3 product to provide interactive tutorials on all the application building basics, so we hope through these various initiatives to really improve the out of box experience. We routinely do support trainings and interact with support when they need assistance from development, so they will be ready to support the 10.1.3 product when customers start needing time-critical help with issues.
Q) JDeveloper as a product has seen many changes since its introduction in 1998. In this time the technology stack has changed frequently, more recently in the web sphere leaping from JSP, UIX and Struts to JavaServer Faces. This presents a challenge to old and new developers alike. Do you see a future of stability or more change?
A) As I mentioned above, we see JSF as hopefully the last “paradigm shift” in J2EE web interface building technologies. As part of the expert group, we’ve insured it is open and extensible enough to permit vendors to develop rich, sophisticated component libraries without having to change the fundamental model of how things fit work or what a developer needs to know to build applications with JSF components. So, in short, I see a future of more stability in this areA)
Q) Java and its relating thick web technology stack has come under attack more recently by reported simplified development web frameworks such as Ruby on Rails (and potentially Microsoft’s .Net). What’s your analysis on these technologies and their contrasts with Java and the facilities provided through JDeveloper?
A) I’ve only just scratched the surface of Ruby on Rails, but my impression of watching the online screencasts of building an “application” in 10 minutes is that I could build that same application in less time with JDeveloper and ADF. Functionality-wise, JDeveloper 10.1.3 holds it own in any kind of comparison with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, except that our fully-loaded product is free and the applications you build with it can deploy to any platform.
Q) With the significant 10.1.3 release behind you, what new features are we likely to see in JDeveloper’s future? Any features that will disappear?
A) We’re working hard on making it easier to build end-user customization into applications, which is a required feature for many portal-style applications in the real world, but very hard to implement in general. We’re also investing a lot of energy in taking our declarative development features in ADF Business Components to the next level to further simplify the next wave of common application patterns that we see our internal and external customers doing most frequently. Finally, we’re already well along the path to implementing additional ADF Faces JSF controls that improve the AJAX-style interactivity of the browser interface. Same JSF architecture, even richer component options being added to the already rich set we offer today. These are all ingredients that are tablestakes features for the coming Oracle Fusion Applications wave, but have the nice side-effect of bringing incredible new power to all JDeveloper/ADF users in the process.
Q) Oracle recently announced that ADF Faces, Oracle's JavaServer Faces implementation will be donated to the Open Source Apache Faces project as Apache Faces Cherokee, with key Oracle programmers supporting the initiative. What were the reasons for the donation and what key benefits will this provide ADF Faces users in your opinion?
I don’t think I can do a better job than Jonas has already done on answering this question here: http://www.orablogs.com/jjacobi/archives/001574.html :)
(This article is a reprint of the article I published in the quarterly AUSOUG magazine Summer 06 edition. I'd like to extend my thanks to Steve Muench for agreeing to the interview, and Brenden Anstey from Delexian and Ray Tindall from Sage Computing Services for their input on this Q&A article.)
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