User experience, new desktop

User experience, more and more software companies are experiencing with new ways of showing various parts of your system.... I found a cool link to a new way of dealing with desktops and more on the smashingmagazine.com website. The Bumptop company has a great way of dealing with the desktop of the future.

BumpTop is a fresh and engaging new way to interact with your computer desktop. You can pile and toss documents like on a real desk. Break free from the rigid and mechanical style of standard point-and-click desktops. Interact by pushing, pulling and piling documents with elegant, self revealing gestures. BumpTop's stunning interface makes clever use of 3D presentation and smooth physics-based animations for an engaging, vivid user experience.

You can view a talk about Bumptop at TED.com and/or view the demo I posted below.

Google Gdrive online storage

The Wall Street Journal reported today that Google has come out with plans to provide a online storage solution. Even do we all have seen this coming for a long time it now becomes reality in, most likely, a quite short time.

The article states that you will be able to "buy" more storage on-top the standard amount of storage data you now get across your Google applications as Gmail etc etc. How it will turn out, the near future will most likely tell us. However, if Google launches this new application we can be sure it will become a success as most of the launches they have done (not counting Orkut). Most likely it will enable you to share your files with your desktop computer and most likely it will have a nice integration with Google applications so you can save the files you create here in the same pool as your regular files.

Oracle security, gain access to OS level

Via the Pete Finnigan website I came across a link to the weblog of Tanel Poder who found a security flaw in Oracle 11g.

"I was doing some low-level security research on Oracle 11g and realized that combining couple little known Oracle’s features can allow anyone with DBA or IMP_FULL_DATABASE rights run any OS command under the same privileges the Oracle processes are running. This allows an attacker to erase files from audit_file_dest or patch the Oracle binary (after setting _disable_image_check to true) or make a dedicated server process a SYSDBA one using a debugger.

I don’t rank this security issue a too critical one as exploiting it requires the attacker to already have high privileges - the BECOME USER privilege in addition to execute rights on KUPP$PROC package used by DataPump. These privileges are included in DBA and IMP_FULL_DATABASE roles by default. So in order to exploit the security flaw you would already have pretty destructive rights ( IMP_FULL_DATABASE has DROP ANY TABLE and such privs in it already )."

I do agree with Tanel Poder that you need a high security level to exploit this security flaw however I do not feel this is a minor security flaw because of this fact. I personally consider every security flaw a big issue and never a minor one. Even do you will need a high security level and trust level within a company it can be a big risk when a unprivileged person can gain access to a security level he or she is not entitled to. I am afraid Oracle corporation will have the same feeling as Tanel Poder and will rank this minor the same as was done with the Oracle applications password and Oracle iStore security flaw I mentioned to oracle.

Oracle and Python

Oracle published today a introduction paper to Oracle and Python in combination with TurboGears. Python is a dynamic object-oriented programming language that can be used for many kinds of software development. It offers strong support for integration with other languages and tools, comes with extensive standard libraries, and can be learned in a few days. Many Python programmers report substantial productivity gains and feel the language encourages the development of higher quality, more maintainable code.

TurboGears can be seen as a development platform for database driven Python web applications and it includes the best practice code peaces which can be reused in a quick and easy way by a developer who is building a webapp with this platform. So now Oracle is adding best practice python code to this project so it will be easy for a developer to connect it to a oracle database. Also some great AJAX code can be found in TurboGears ready for you to use without writing to much code yourself.

If you like to have a quick introduction to TurboGears you view a very good video tutorial on the TurboGears website.

Oracle Keynotes at Oracle OpenWorld

Oracle keynotes given on the Oracle OpenWorld 2007 conference by Larry Ellison, Safra Catz, Hector de J. Ruiz, Charles Phillips, Mark Hurd, Andy Mendelsohn, Paul S. Otellini, Thomas Kurian, Ed Abbo, Jonathan Schwartz and Michael Dell can be found on the oracle website as MP3 and video format.

file-max and semmni parameters

During installation of Oracle Application server on a fresh RedHat Linux server we encountered the problems as shown below.

Checking for hardnofiles=1024; found hardnofiles=1024. Passed
Checking for VERSION=2.6.9-11.EL; found VERSION=2.6.9-55.ELsmp. Passed
Checking for file-max=206173; found file-max=16384. Failed <<<<
Checking for semmsl=256; found semmsl=522. Passed
Checking for semmni=142; found semmni=128. Failed <<<<
Checking for msgmax=8192; found msgmax=8192. Passed
Checking for shmmni=4096; found shmmni=4096. Passed
Checking for softnofiles=1024; found softnofiles=1024. Passed
Check complete. The overall result of this check is: Failed <<<<
Problem: The security parameters in the kernel do not meet the minimum requirements (see above).
Recommendation: Perform operating system specific instructions to update the kernel parameters, namely BIT_SIZE and noexec_user_stack.
=======================================================================

Checking for file-max=206173; found file-max=16384. Failed <<<<
This number indicates the maximum number of files normal users (i.e. non-root) can have open in a single session. Note that for the root user, ulimit -n will sometimes output 1024 even after following the procedure to increase the maximum number of open files. This won't effect root's ability to open large numbers of files, as only normal users are bound by this value. To check the current active setting execute the following command:

#cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max

If this is not what you desire, you want it for example set to 206173 you can execute the following command to make it active on-the-fly:

#echo 206173 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max

The downside of this is that the next time you have to reboot your system you will loose the new settings. To make sure that during the next boot your system will have those settings you have to edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file. In this file you have to make sure that the file-max line reads:

fs.file-max = 206173


Checking for semmni=142; found semmni=128. Failed <<<<
The semmni parameter defines the maximum number of semaphore sets in the entire Linux system. You can check the current setting of the semmni parameter by executing the following command:

ipcs -ls

Or you can do a cat /proc/sys/kernel/sem which will give you also the requested information even do it will be in a less user vriendly way. To set new settings on-the-fly you can set them by executing the following command:

#echo 256 32000 100 142 > /proc/sys/kernel/sem

However, to set the new settings permanalty you will have to change the kernel.sem settings in /etc/sysctl.conf so it will be used during a reboot.

ORA-00020

“Oracle error: ORA-00020: maximum number of processes exceeded”

This error messages indicates that the max number of processes set by the processes parameter is reached. You can check the number of processes in a Oracle database by executing the following SQL query:

select count(1) from v$process

This will return you the current number of processes, to check the maximum number of processes you will have to check the parameter set by executing the following command:

SHOW PARAMETERS WHERE NAME = 'processes'

If you feel that this number is to low you will have to change it which can be done by executing the following command:

alter system set PROCESSES=600 scope=SPFILE;

600 is the new value of the processes parameter. For more information about the alter system options and alike check this website.

ZOHO online database

ZOHO, very web2.0. A online database application builder which might be a little inspired by Oracle Application Express. It looks very nice and can be fun to play with. However if you are thinking about a more serious way of maintaining your data and creating an application you might consider a different approach. Even do, applause for the developers of ZOHO, they have done a very good job in creating a very very nice online application.

Promotional goods in Oracle QP

Companies using Oracle E–business suite can request to have a promotional goods for a defined period of time. Meaning if you buy product A you will get product B as a free promotional item.

In this example we will setup E-business suite in a way that if you buy product “Nokia-E61i” you will get 1 “Nokia-E61i-headset” for free even do the Nokia-E61i will have a list price of 25 euro’s on the pricelist.

First step is to create both items in the item master and assign them to one or more transaction organizations. After that we will create a price for both items on the appropriate pricelist.


Now we will create a new Modifier for the promotional goods with the type Promotion. On the modifiers summary we create a line with the modifier type Promotional Goods in combination with a start-date and a end-date to make sure that the promotion action will end on the correct day. Also set the Automatic flag on line level and header level and make sure you set “Product Attribute” and “Product Attribute Value” as shown in the screenhot.

Now we have to add the promotional item, the headset which you will get for free when you order the main item, the phone. By clicking on the “Define Details” button you will get the screen where you can add the Get product. Besides the Item we also will define that the Application Method is “new price” and the associated value is 0 meaning that a new price will be set to the price 0.

With all this set, when we enter a order for item “Nokia-E61i” a order line for 1 EA “Nokia-E61i-headset” for price 0 will be added automatically to the order.

Oracle VM release

Oracle has released 3 new products , Oracle VM Manager, Oracle VM Server and Oracle VM Agent. Oracle VM suite will be responsible for the virtualization Oracle has in mind. Before we could already make use of some virtualization platforms like VMware and the opensource Xen and now Oracle is here with its own virtualization platform Oracle VM. Oracle VM is consisting of Xen's open source server software and an integrated Web browser-based management console, Oracle VM provides an easy-to-use graphical interface for creating and managing virtual server pools, running on x86 and x86-64-based systems, across an enterprise.

It will be capable of running Windows, Linux and Solaris inside virtual machines which will be running on top of the Oracle VM operating system or Management Operating System as oracle likes to call it. You can see a quick overview of this in the picture below.

Oracle is working together with a number of partners to make this new Oracle VM approach a success, they team-up with AMD, Dell, Emulex, HP, Liquid Computing, NetApp, Pillar Data Systems and QLogic.

Personally I find the partnership on this project with NetApp interesting as the ESX solution from VMware was not proving a satisfying result with the combination Oracle NetApp.

Currently we are allocating hardware to start a test environment for the new Oracle VM products to test them and try them.

Oracle Webcache error.

Currently we are running Oracle Application Server 10g (10.1.2.0.2) with Oracle HTTP Server / OracleAS Web-Cache 10g (10.1.2.0.2) at some of the servers running a high traffic website. For some time we have had the following error message shown in the clients web browsers at random times:

------------------------------------------------------
Illegal Characters in Request/Response

The security gateway refused to process and retrieve the URL you requested because of a protocol violation:

The security gateway saw the request/response:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:41:56 GMT Server: Oracle-Application-Server-10g/10.1.2.0.2 Oracle-HTTP-Server OracleAS-Web-Cache-10g/10.1.2.0.2 (H;max-age=214741422+0;age=66556;ecid=1194964916: 10.32.4.3:8357:0:5777b\37777777613\001 ) Cache-Control: private Content-Type: text/html Content-Encoding: gzip Content-Length: 3497 X-Pad: avoid browser bug X-Cache: MISS from amssys02.dmz-out.smartapps.nl Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100 Connection: Keep-Alive \037\37777777613\010

This kind of protocol violation is denied in order to protect Web clients/servers from attacks that include control and other non-printable characters. It is also denied to ensure that only HTTP traffic is passed by the HTTP proxy, thus ensuring the integrity of your site's security policy.

If you believe that this request should have been allowed, contact the Web site administrator and request that their application be modified to be HTTP compliant.
------------------------------------------------------

After some research we found that the “server” header from the response from the webserver contained the illegal characters mentioned. Below we see a header that is passed correctly to the client without being refused by the security gateway. At the end of the “server” string we can see the following text “2136out.smarÇTÄ)” This text is changing every time you request the page. Meaning that in some cases the characters are not compliant to the characters that are agreed on in the RFC.

------------------------------------------------------
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.thetasteoflife.nl
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025

Firefox/2.0.0.9
Accept:

text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;

q=0.5
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: __utma=83643603.296507212.1191756626.1195044105.1195049174.28; __utmz=83643603.1193130261.16.3.utmccn=(referral)|utmcsr=miele.nl|utmcct=/apps/vg/nl/miele/Miele001.nsf/LookUpPage/Homepage|utmcmd=referral; __utmc=83643603; __utmb=83643603

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:09:42 GMT
Server: Oracle-Application-Server-10g/10.1.2.0.2 Oracle-HTTP-Server

OracleAS-Web-Cache-10g/10.1.2.0.2

(H;max-age=214748349+0;age=157949;ecid=1195049382:10.32.4.3:8408:0:2136out.smarÇTÄ)
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 1701
X-Cache: MISS from amssys02.dmz-out.smartapps.nl
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
------------------------------------------------------

If this is the case and some of the “random” characters are not in the character map agreed upon in the RFC the security gateway will close the connection and the client will get the following http header error (Illegal Character in Response Header):

------------------------------------------------------
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.thetasteoflife.nl
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025

Firefox/2.0.0.9
Accept:

text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;

q=0.5
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: __utma=83643603.296507212.1191756626.1194798880.1195044105.27; __utmz=83643603.1193130261.16.3.utmccn=(referral)|utmcsr=miele.nl|utmcct=/apps/vg/nl/miele/Miele001.nsf/LookUpPage/Homepage|utmcmd=referral;__utmc=83643603

HTTP/1.x 400 Illegal Character in Response Header
MIME-Version: 1.0
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:58:49 GMT
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
------------------------------------------------------

This will result in the error page in the browser on the client side. Meaning as long as the random chars are not hitting “faulty” characters the website is shown correct, if not the client is showing a error page. To prevent this the “server” header in the response headers needed to be modified. To do so in Oracle Web Cache you need to modify the webcache settings in the webcache.xml configuration file and restart webcache. Change the string:

<debuginfo header="YES" eventlog="NO" htmlcomment="NO" switchstring="+wcdebug">

To:

<debuginfo header="NO" eventlog="NO" htmlcomment="NO" switchstring="+wcdebug">

After that, restart webcache and your “server” response header will look clean and will not have “random” chars in it which can create the error.

“Oracle-Application-Server-10g/10.1.2.0.2 Oracle-HTTP-Server OracleAS-Web-Cache-10g/10.1.2.0.2”

Powerpoint online

Web2.0 is all about sharing and user generated content online. Some web2.0 initiatives are great for sharing your pictures online, placing them on a "google" map and give the rest of the world the option to look at places via your pictures. Also web2.0 have brought us the possibility to work online in word like applications and now we have some sort of powerpoint online in the form of ShowBeyond, a place where can you create and share slideshows online. A great online app which, if it starts to pick up speed can become a great tool.

SQL Server 2005 Driver for PHP

Microsoft has released a driver for php to connect to MS SQL server. There where already ways if doing this but now there is a new kid on the block written by Microsoft itself.

The SQL Server Driver for PHP Community Technology Preview (CTP) is designed to enable reliable, scalable integration with SQL Server for PHP applications deployed on the Windows platform. The Driver for PHP is a PHP 5 extension that allows the reading and writing of SQL Server data from within PHP scripts. It provides a procedural interface for accessing data in all Editions of SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000 (including Express Edition), and makes use of PHP features, including PHP streams to read and write large objects.

MSDN channel 9 is running a video interview with some of the developers which you can view here below. You can find out more about the driver itself here

removed the embedded video because wmv embedding is not working for all platforms and browser equally right. You can view the video via this link

Getting ahead of Web 2.0

Paul Pedrazzi, the founder of AppsLab, on connecting employees and getting the job done:
"Ten years ago, employees used tools and services that employers installed for them to get their jobs done. Today, they still use what they are given, but many are downloading and installing non approved applications or signing up for outside services. The reason: corporations aren't keeping up with the Web 2.0 technologies that can help employees get their jobs done more quickly. The result: employers have less control than they did in the past, but even more important, they're not creating a culture of employee loyalty and satisfaction.
Employees are trying to get their jobs done within the organization, and they don't hav the tools they need. Either the tool don;t exist, they can't be found, or in some cases they are just not usable enough. Whatever the reason, employees feel stuck, explains Paul Pedrazzi, the founder of Oracle's AppsLab. So they're saying 'I need to get this job done. I'm going to use this tool or services that is available, and I'm going to get my job done.' Employees are not doing it to be mailcious or break IT rules, or to be hip with Web 2.0. They're doing it because they want to be more productive. I think that's the perspective that executives should have"
From Oracle Profit magazine november 2007

I do agree with Paul at some points, however I feel that some people do use tools and services to be hip and I feel that we have to very aware not to create applications on a Web 2.0 platform because it it a Web 2.0 Platform. However, looking at the new product range of Oracle we can find some tools that are inspired by talks like this inside Oracle. If we look at Oracle Business Intelligence Standard One for example. This gives users a wide variety of tools to create reports and services and share them with others on a life dataset. I have been playing around with it now for some time and I personally think it is a great tool on a Web 2.0 platform.

RedHat Linux disk partitions

After installing a RedHat Linux server from a kickstart script and having a larger disk in your server than normally there can be some space left on the disk that is not allocated into a partition.

First thing you have to do is to determine if this is the case. First thing to do is to find out what is mounted and how the current setup is done.

You can use the df command for this:

[root@amssys04 ~]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb2 3.0G 2.2G 650M 78% /
/dev/sda1 99M 9.2M 85M 10% /boot
none 1.5G 0 1.5G 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sdb1 4.0G 41M 3.7G 2% /oebs/oemagent
/dev/sda3 2.0G 36M 1.9G 2% /tmp
/dev/sda5 494M 69M 400M 15% /var

If you do a little math you can find out if all the space is mounted to your filesystem or not. If this is not the case there are several possibilities. (A) there is a partition created but not mounted or (B)there is no partition created and you have to create the partition before you can mount this to your filesystem. For this example we go for situation B.

You can check your partition settings by using the fdisk tool available from your prompt. We do fdisk /dev/sda because we like to view the partition settings of the /dev/sda disk.

[root@amssys04 ~]# fdisk /dev/sda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 19457.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help):

M will print some more information for you. We would like to view what is assigned or not so we take the p command to print the settings to the screen.

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 14 535 4192965 82 Linux swap
/dev/sda3 536 796 2096482+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 797 19457 149894482+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 797 861 522081 83 Linux


From this information we can see that there is space between 861 and 19457. By using the n command you will be guided into creating a new partition. You will be asked to enter the first and the last sector where you like to create your new partition. When this is done you write the changes to the system by the w command. A kernel reboot is needed to pick the changes up. You will now have a /dev/sda6 partition which is at this moment still useless.

First we have to format the new partition by executing the following command:
/sbin/mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hda6

When formating is done we have to label the partition by using the following command:
e2label /dev/hda6 /as

Now we like to mount this new partition to the filesystem. First we have to create a directory a mount point and then add it to fstab by editing /etc/fstab

cd /
mkdir sa


And add the following line to /etc/fstab
LABEL=/as /as ext3 defaults 1 2

Finaly mount it to your filesystem by executing:
mount /as

Oracle Application Modules List

Oracle has a large number of modules you can use both having a shortname and longname. Knowing those shortnames can make working on a Oracle E-business suite database a lot more fun as you know what prefix is used for which module. Are you looking at a Advanced Pricing table or a Order Management table.

You can find the current list below:

ABM - Activity Based Management (Obsolete)
AD - s DBA
AHL - Complex Maintenance Repair and Overhaul
AHM - Hosting Manager(Obsolete)
AK - Common Modules-AK
ALR - Alert
AME - Approvals Management
AMF - Fulfillment Services (Obsolete)
AMS - Marketing
AMV - Marketing Encyclopedia System
AMW - Internal Controls Manager
AN - Sales Analysis
AP - Payables
AR - Receivables
AS - Sales Foundation
ASF - Sales Online
ASG - CRM Gateway for Mobile Devices
ASL - Sales Offline
ASN - Sales
ASO - Order Capture
ASP - Oracle Sales for Handhelds
AST - TeleSales
AU - Utilities
AX - Global Accounting Engine
AZ - Implementation
BEN - Advanced Benefits
BIC - Customer Intelligence (obsolete)
BIE - eCommerce Intelligence
BIL - Sales Intelligence
BIM - Marketing Intelligence
BIN - Communications Intelligence
BIS - s BIS
BIV - Service Intelligence
BIX - Interaction Center Intelligence
BIY - Systems Intelligence
BLC - Utility Billing
BNE - Web s Desktop Integrator
BOM - Bills of Material
BSC - Balanced Scorecard
CCT - Telephony Manager
CDR - Oracle Clinical Data Repository
CE - Cash Management
CHV - Supplier Scheduling
CLA - APAC Consulting Localizations
CLE - EMEA Consulting Localizations
CLJ - Japan Consulting Localizations
CLL - LAD Consulting Localizations
CLN - Supply Chain Trading Connector for RosettaNet
CN - Incentive Compensation
CPGC - CPG - CDOA
CRP - Capacity
CS - Service
CSC - Customer Care
CSD - Depot Repair
CSE - Asset Tracking
CSF - Field Service
CSI - Install Base
CSL - Field Service/Laptop
CSM - Field Service/Palm
CSN - Call Center
CSP - Spares Management
CSR - Scheduler
CSS - Support (obsolete)
CST - Cost Management
CTB - Clinical Transaction Base
CUA - Capital Resource Logistics - Assets
CUC - Revenue Accounting
CUE - Billing Connect (obsolete)
CUF - Capital Resource Logistics - Financials
CUG - Citizen Interaction Center
CUI - Network Logistics - Inventory
CUN - Network Logistics - NATS (obsolete)
CUP - Network Logistics - Purchasing
CUR - Mass Market Receivables for Comms
CUS - Network Logistics
CZ - Configurator
DDD - CADView-3D
DEM01 - Team 01 Order Entry Demo
DNA - Development
DOM - Document Managment and Collaboration
DT - DateTrack
DUMMY_GMO - Obsolete Process Operations
EAA - SEM Exchange (obsolete)
EAM - Enterprise Asset Management
EC - e-Commerce Gateway
ECX - XML Gateway
EDR - E-Records
EGO - Advanced Product Catalog
EMS - Environment Management System
ENG - Engineering
ENI - Product Intelligence
EVM - Value Based Management
FEM - Enterprise Performance Foundation
FF - FastFormula
FII - Financial Intelligence
FLM - Flow Manufacturing
FND - Object Library
FPA - Project Portfolio Analysis
FPT - Banking Center (obsolete)
FRM - Report Manager
FTE - Transportation Execution
FTP - Transfer Pricing
FUN - Financials Common Modules
FV - Federal Financials
GCS - Financial Consolidation Hub
GHR - US Federal Human Resources
GL - General Ledger
GMA - Process Manufacturing Systems
GMD - Process Manufacturing Product Development
GME - Process Manufacturing Process Execution
GMF - Process Manufacturing Financials
GMI - Process Manufacturing Inventory
GML - Process Manufacturing Logistics
GMO - Process Operations
GMP - Process Manufacturing Process Planning
GMS - Grants Accounting
GMW - Process Manufacturing Portal
GNI - Genealogy Intelligence
GR - Process Manufacturing Regulatory Management
HCA - Healthcare
HCC - iHCConnect
HCN - iHCIntegrate
HCP - Healthcare Intelligence
HCT - Healthcare Terminology Server
HRI - Human Resources Intelligence
HXC - Time and Labor Engine
HXT - Time and Labor
IA - iAssets
IAM - Digital Asset Management
IBA - iMarketing (Obsolete)
IBC - Content Manager
IBE - iStore
IBP - Bill Presentment & Payment
IBT - iAuction
IBU - iSupport
IBW - Oracle Web Analytics
IBY - Payments
ICX - Oracle iProcurement
IEB - Interaction Blending
IEC - Advanced Outbound Telephony
IEM - Email Center
IEO - Interaction Center Technology
IEP - Predictive
IES - Scripting
IET - Call Center Connectors
IEU - Universal Work Queue
IEV - IVR Integrator
IEX - Collections
IGC - Contract Commitment
IGF - Financial Aid
IGI - Public Sector Financials International
IGS - Student System
IGW - Grants Proposal
IMC - Customers Online
IMT - iMeeting (obsolete)
INV - Inventory
IPA - Capital Resource Logistics - Projects
IPD - Product Development (obsolete)
IPM - Oracle Imaging Process Management
IRC - iRecruitment
ISC - Supply Chain Intelligence
ISX - iSettlement
ITA - Information Technology Audit
ITG - Internet Procurement Enterprise Connector
JA - Asia/Pacific Localizations
JE - European Localizations
JG - Regional Localizations
JL - Latin America Localizations
JMF - Supply Chain Localizations
JTF - CRM Foundation
JTM - Mobile Foundation
JTS - CRM Self Service Administration
LNS - Loans
ME - Controlled Availability Product(Obsolete)
MFG - Manufacturing
MIA - Mobile s for Inventory Management
MIV - Media Interactive
MQA - Mobile Quality s
MRP - Master Scheduling/MRP
MSC - Advanced Supply Chain Planning
MSD - Demand Planning
MSO - Constraint Based Optimization
MSR - Inventory Optimization
MST - Transportation Planning
MWA - Mobile s
OAM - Oracle s Manager
ODQ - Data Query
OE - Order Entry
OFA - Assets
OKB - Contracts for Subscriptions (Obsolete)
OKC - Contracts Core
OKC_REP_TXT_INDEX_OPTIMIZE - Optimize Contracts Repository Text index
OKC_REP_TXT_INDEX_SYNC - Build/syncronize Contracts Repository Text index
OKE - Project Contracts
OKI - Contracts Intelligence
OKL - Lease Management
OKO - Contracts for Sales (Obsolete)
OKP - Contracts for Procurement (Obsolete)
OKR - Contracts for Rights (Obsolete)
OKS - Service Contracts
OKT - Royalty Management
OKX - Contracts Integration
ONT - Order Management
OPI - Operations Intelligence
OTA - Learning Management
OUC - University Curriculum
OZF - Trade Management
OZP - Trade Planning (Obsolete)
OZS - iClaims (Obsolete)
PA - Projects
PAY - Payroll
PBR - Budgeting and Planning
PER - Human Resources
PFT - Oracle Profitability Manager
PJI - Project Intelligence
PJM - Project Manufacturing
PMI - Process Manufacturing Intelligence
PN - Property Manager
PO - Purchasing
POA - Purchasing Intelligence
POM - Exchange
PON - Sourcing
POS - iSupplier Portal
PQH - Public Sector HR
PQP - Public Sector Payroll
PRP - Proposals
PSA - Public Sector Financials
PSB - Public Sector Budgeting
PSP - Labor Distribution
PSR - Public Sector Receivables
PTX - Patch Tracking System
PV - Partner Management
QA - Quality
QOT - Quoting
QP - Advanced Pricing
QRM - Risk Management
RCM - Regulatory Capital Manager (obsolete)
RG - Report Generator
RHX - Advanced Planning Foundation(obsolete)
RLA - Release Management Integration Kit (Obsolete)
RLM - Release Management
RMG - Risk Manager
RRC - Retail Core
RRS - Site Management
SHT - s Shared Technology
SSP - SSP
SYSADMIN - System Administration
TEST - test
VEA - Automotive
VEH - Automotive Integration Kit (Obsolete)
WIP - Work in Process
WMA - Manufacturing Mobile s
WMS - Warehouse Management
WPS - Manufacturing Scheduling
WSH - Shipping Execution
WSM - Shop Floor Management
XDO - XML Publisher
XDP - Provisioning
XLA - Subledger Accounting
XLE - Legal Entity Configurator
XNA - Service Assurance for Communications
XNB - Oracle Telecommunications Billing Integrator
XNC - Sales for Communications (Obsolete)
XNI - Install Base Intelligence (Obsolete)
XNM - Marketing for Communications (Obsolete)
XNP - Number Portability
XNS - Service for Communications (obsolete)
XNT - TeleBusiness for Telecom/Utilities
XTR - Treasury
ZFA - Financial Analyzer
ZPB - Enterprise Planning and Budgeting
ZSA - Sales Analyzer
ZX - E-Business Tax

Rounding factor can not be modified

When trying to change round precision in Oracle E-business suite under Oracle Advanced Pricing (QP) I received a “Rounding factor can not be modified”. The value of “Round to” stated -2 even do the prices where shown with a five digit precision. Trying to change it to -5 and back to -2 or any other combination resulted in this error.

Metalink not 264446.1 provided the solution. It stated a different error message “The rounding factor has to be greater or equal to -2” but the solution was to change the profile option of “QP: Unit Price Precision Type” to standard instead of Extended.

Customer item numbers in Oracle Inventory

When dealing with large customers it is possible that your customer is demanding that he can order goods from you by using there own item numbers which can be quite different from the item numbers you are used to work with.

To enable your order entry desks, using Oracle e-business suite, to quickly enter order by making use of the customer specific items there is a option to make a mapping between the internal item numbers and the customer item numbers in Oracle Inventory.

To do so you first have to setup a Customer Item Commodity Code for to group the customer items for a specific customer in a group so you can keep control over it. You can find the “Customer Item Commodity Codes” under the Inventory responsibility by navigating to Setup – Items – Customer Item Commodity Codes.


After setting up the commodity code you navigate to Items – Customer Items – Customer Items. Here you can create “dummy” item numbers which represents the item numbers your customer likes to use. Later we will link those customer item numbers to the internal item numbers.


After creating those customer item numbers you will have to link the customer item numbers to your internal item numbers. To do so navigate to Items – Customer Items – Customer Item Cross References. Here we can make the link between the 2 item numbers so the customer item numbers will become useful in the rest of the application.

Oracle Form Personalization

When working with Oracle forms and especially when implementing Oracle E-business suite you will get questions from customers that they would like to see things differently from what the original programmer intended. In most cases these request are for the majority about the look and feel. Some fields are in the wrong place in the opinion of the customer.

Most of those cases can be dealt with by using oracle personalization. Ramakrishna Goud from GE has written a very good starting guide in personalizing forms. You can download the guide from my personal website.

The future of productivity

The future of productivity, how will we work with computers and how will they influence our daily lives in 2030. For some people a mystery and not something on there minds. For some companies and researches already a point on the agenda to discuss. Watching trends and be able to predict those trends are vital in some market segments. And maybe it is not the market who is following the trend but the market who set the trend. Even do we, the people or consumers so to say, have a more and more influencing role in the future of products and especially the IT market still big companies are for a large portion responsible for the road to follow for most of us.

Even do we can influence by open source and all kinds of platforms where we can spill our thoughts about how things should be done it is still good to look at what research companies believe the future will bring for us.

Some of the things mentioned in the graphs will be coming from research labs around the world and some, and I think personally a larger and larger number will come from the open source world. It is good to keep the graphs in mind when planning a future road for your company.


Thing like SaaS, Software As A Service are now already in place. SmartApps for example if providing Oracle Applications like the e-business suite in a SaaS model. Social Networking, a common good those days, think about LinkedIn for example and so are most of the things in the Web 2.0 part quite common those days and even some of the Web 3.0 parts are already know like widgets and Semantic searches.

Just some things to look into already because I am quite sure you will encounter them quicker than you personally think at this moment. The images and most of the research I was inspired by for making this post was done by Radar Networks.