To start the Oracle OpenWorld on this Sunday morning, the Swiss community organized a brunch. Thanks for inviting me! It was an interesting networking place in a very good hotel on the 25th floor.
As I could not wait and wanted to see my first session, I rapidly went to the Moscone center to follow the awaited sessions.

Below is my first day sessions’ plan:

  1. OAUG, Oracle Governance, Risk and Compliance SIG Meeting (GRC SIG)
  2. Printing Options for Oracle Application Express: FOP and Oracle Application Express Listeners
  3. Solving Critical Customer Issues with the Oracle Database 12c Optimizer
  4. Printing Options for Oracle Application Express: PL/PDF
  5. OAUG Oracle Business Intelligence SIG Meeting (OBI SIG)
  6. The Welcome Keynote

In this blog post, I will summarize what I have learn during these sessions.
Please notice that a lot of things were covered during sessions. I only speak about key points.

1. GRC SIG

Speaker: Lewis Hopkins, Technical Manager, Q Software Global Limited

This session was about the Oracle E-Business customer suite. It focused on the enforcement of segregation of Duty (SOD) for controls and security policies in all EBS module.

EBS has a complicated security model which is difficult to maintain. The goal of this product is to model controls and security policies to have an entry point to understand this complexity in order to reduce it.

Lots of information was covered to understand the usefulness of the product.

Let me mention that at the end of this session, there was an interesting point on Oracle Advanced Controls which was designed to enhance process effectiveness for all kinds of business applications to improve cash flow and business processes. It also ensures data integrity, improves change management, and reduces project costs.

2. APEX printing using XSL-FO

Speaker: Doug Gault, APEX Practice Director, Enkitec

First of all, Doug Gault introduces the XSL-FO markup language for XML Documents wich needs an XSL-FO processor in order to be parsed and rendered. The main functionality is to generate a PDF document. In comparison with HTML/CSS, XSL-FO contains all styling directives to render the PDF document and bind it to the data rendered in the PDF document.

During this session, Doug Gault exposed the installation options as follow:

1. Apache FOP web application deployed on an Oracle Container for Java (OC4J)

2. APEX Listener 2.0 and Apex 4.2.2+ wich contains the FOP processor

For these two installations options:

  • The 11g ACL must be granted on the print server
  • The APEX Instance must activate the print server and it must be configured

Doug Gault also explained the integration and implementation of XSL-FO for APEX

Continuing his presentation, he focused on APEX report attributes features and the possibility to print a report directly from a button or a link.

At the end, there was a demonstration. It focused on APEX configuration and a GUI tool call J4L-FO designer to easily design report template. Please note that it’s not the only GUI tool for XSL-FO template.

3. Solving Critical Customer Issues with the Oracle Database 12c Optimizer

Speaker: Nicolas Jardot, Oracle Consultant, dbi services

Nicolas Jardot is a colleague of mine. He presented customer use cases and demonstrated how the new 12c optimizer can help handling critical customer issues.

You can get more informations about his session on the dbi services blog.

4. Printing Options for Oracle Application Express: PL/PDF

Speaker: Scott Spendolini, Executive Director, Enkitec

Another session on printing solutions for APEX. In comparison with the XSL-FO and FOP processor, this solution is directly embedded in the database such as APEX. This API provides all important functionalities such as graph and report (etc.) to generate database data to PDF through APEX or other custom PL/SQL code.

Installation and integration are very easy. The SQL script must be executed on the database, permission must be granted, synonyms created – and it’s done.

Unfortunately, compared to other printing solution, there is no GUI tool to easily design the report. All the reports must be coded in PL/SQL. It is completely customizable.

5. The BI SIG

This session focused on Oracle Business Intelligence SIG announcement, featuring a roadmap and customer insights with feedback.

The key points were an OBI mobile development tool update and new functionalities and improvements on the security toolkit. Lots of improvement have been made on the BI mobile application designer and the BI mobile HD.

6. The Opening Keynote

Speakers:

Noriyuki Toyoki, Corporate Senior Vice President, Fujitsu Limited
Larry Ellison Chief Executive Office, Oracle Corporation

Some announcement have been made. I will just enumerate them:

  • The Fujitsu alliance: they promised that it will improve processor capability, thus increasing performance for big data
  • In-memory database option: this option shall provide significant enhancements in speed
  • New hardware applicance: M6 appliance and database backup, logging and recovery appliance

The opening keynote focused on performance needs (faster throughput and response) due to data growth and the emergence of a big data concept.

To conclude, this first day was very interesting. Oracle OpenWorld is pretty incredible! I hope that it will continue in this way and that I will see even more fascinating sessions during the next days.

Stay tuned for other information from OOW 2013!