Mark Rittman

"As organizations grow to depend on globally distributed service networks, their business intelligence (BI) capability must adapt. Here's how autonomous agents will "embed" BI in business processes to overcome new challenges."writes Naeem Hashmi [http://www.intelligententerprise.com/print_article.jhtml?articleID=20600076]for

Omar Irbough [irbouh@videotron.ca] wrote to me today about a blogging application he's written using HTMLDB [http://htmldb.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=2330:1:1390305449765048892]. It's currently hosted using Oracle's HTMLDB hosted environment [http://htmldb.oracle.com] and Omar will be

"DBAs have for too long thought of themselves as mere gatekeepers to databases. This mentality has pushed us down the corporate food chain; increasingly, we are not thought of as problem solvers. But we can change negative perceptions and begin positively impacting our companies and helping our customers."

"The market for database server software, seen as a barometer of overall software market health, grew slightly last year, fueled in part by sales of Linux." reports CNET News.com in an article titled"Database Sales Bouncing Back" [http://news.com.com/Database+sales+bouncing+back/

With Oracle Database 10g nearing release date for Apple OSX Server, Oracle and Apple are running a series of joint seminars [http://seminars.apple.com/tours/oracle/indextrk.html?s=1] in Reston, Cupertino, London, Paris and Tokyo to introduce this first supported release of the Oracle RDBMS on the

"To secure sensitive data, Oracle provides developers with the DBMS_OBFUSCATION_TOOLKIT, an industrial strength version of the DBMS_RANDOM package. You may feel the need of a decoder just to keep track of all the acronyms and to decrypt the errors in Oracle's sample code, but

Oracle Portal comes with a useful web interface for building pages out of regions, items and portlets. If you're familiar with Oracle Portal and the site design is not too complicated, you can usually put something together that looks good and fits within the Portal page structure. But

Dizwell Informatics [http://www.dizwell.com] has put together anOracle FAQ [http://www.dizwell.com/html/oracle_faq.html] written by Howard Rogers that addresses some common questions around the Oracle database. It's divided into four sections (basic and expert administration, together with backup/recovery and performance tuning,

There's an interesting article currently running over on OTN entitled "Use Location Information in Enterprise Reporting [http://otn.oracle.com/pub/articles/lokitz_location.html]". According to the introduction, the article helps you "Learn how to create dynamic maps that make the relationships between attribute

Eric Mortensen has started an Oracle Weblog [http://www.ericmortensen.net/] that looks at issues around the Oracle RDBMS, SQL and PL/SQL. In the first few postings, Eric has looked at safe type conversion with PL/SQL [http://www.ericmortensen.net/mt/archives/000006.html], a full-table scan

"Oraclerecently announced on its Web site [http://www.oracle.com/education/certification/index.html?dba9i_linux.html] that it is launching a new Linux certification: Managing Oracle9i on Linux. Oracle describes the title as the "first" specialty for those holding its Oracle Certified Professional Database Administrators (OCP

"Oracle will finish switching its 9,000-person in-house programming staff to Linux by the end of 2004, the database powerhouse said Wednesday."writes Stephen Shankland [http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5220881.html]for CNET News.com. "In October, the company finished the Linux

The forthcoming ODTUG Conference 2004 [http://www.odtug.com/2004_conference.htm] has a number of presentations [http://otn.oracle.com/collaboration/user_group/events/odtug2004/index.html] that'll be of interest to Oracle BI&W developers. As it's in Arizona I can't

"Tuning problematic SQL statements is neither rocket science nor magic. All relational databases generate an execution plan for the submitted SQL. This execution plan then tells Oracle how to retrieve the data, or, how to perform the data-related tasks. The better you understand how to interpret these explain

If anyone's interested, Peter Odds and I have set up an Oracle OLAP mailing list as an additional resource for developers working with the OLAP Option. The list homepage is athttp://www.rittman.net/lists/olap where you can subscribe, change subscription options or view the list archives.

Julian Ford [jford@plusconsultancy.co.uk] passed on a link to an article by Michael J. Radwin on Buildng Data Warehouses With mySQL [http://www.radwin.org/michael/blog/2003/07/building_data_warehouses_w.html]. The article refers to a presentation by John Ashenfelter [http://www.ashenfelter.com/] who&

There's a good article currently running over at Oracle-base.com [http://www.oracle-base.com] detailing the performance tuning enhancements in Oracle Database 10g [http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/10g/PerformanceTuningEnhancements10g.php]. It's a fairly detailed document and covers the following areas; * Automatic Performance

"Our previous article in this series,

Andy Todd [http://www.halfcooked.com/mt] points out a useful guide to installing Oracle Database 10g on Debian [http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/Oracle_10g.shtml]. According to the guide, "We go through, step-by-step, the process of installing Oracle 10g Release 1 (10.1.0.

"JOLAP, XML/A, JDBC, OLE- DB, ODBC, MDAPI, DCOM, CORBA, J2EE, and even dear old MOM is in there somewhere. It sounds like alphabet soup or the refrain of "Old McDonald Had a Farm" (E-I-E-I-O...) in terms of the jumble of acronyms that

It was actually published last August, but Oracle have made available an document entitled "OFA/OSA to EPB Migration Roadmap [http://www.oracle.com/applications/cpm/EPBMigration_Aug03.pdf]" which sets out the migration path for Oracle Financial Analyzer and Oracle Sales Analyzer customers to the forthcoming Enterprise

"So you've deployed your first dimensional data mart. Fortunately, the business loves it and is clamoring for more! They want to query and analyze integrated data from additional enterprise data sources. For some of you, this demand is a dream come true. For others, it may be

"One of the latest trends is for systems to have more and more CPUs inside a single server. Using symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) servers, it is not uncommon for an Oracle server to have 8, 16, or 32 CPUs, along with many gigabytes of RAM for the Oracle SGA regions.

"Oracle has introduced significant management automation features in its flagship database product and has described the new Oracle Database 10g release as "the self-managing database." Given that achievement and direction, I thought it would make sense to talk about how to write one's PL/

I've been working away on client sites over the last few weeks, and because of this I've not really had any spare time for writing articles or answering questions. Apologies if you've sent me a question and you've not heard back, and