2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 90,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Windows Phone 8, Are you ready for it?

 

WP8-580-75

Nokia, HTC, Samsung, xyz… all have already jumped in, or jumping into the new so called ecosystem. We are asking YOU, are you ready for it?

I just completed my first 24 hours with my Windows Phone 8 and following were my observations

The good

  1. Amazingly fast, while taking the processor and memory primary bench marking parameters
  2. UI is simple, fluid and there are no seven or eight pages to scroll around, everything is in single place
  3. Live tiles are fun (most probably because they are something new) and resizable to programmed pre-defined sizes (ie, you cannot decide the size for the tile, in short)
  4. Available applications with the market place is neatly combed, organized
  5. Facebook application is a different experience

The bad

  1. Phone functions lacking innovativeness
    1. You have to always scroll up or down to find the call button :), must be a factor with getting “used to” it
    2. There are no provisions for setting up speed dials, ie, you cannot assign a contact to a particular digit with the dial pad and initiate a call, like how you were used with almost all symbian iterations throughout these years
  2. No file browser or file manager
    1. A smartphone without a file manager doesn’t make sense. with whooping 16GB to 32GB storage, you are crippled unless you can connect your phone to a compatible computer and go through what you have in the storage
    2. You don’t have any idea, what happened to the file you just transferred to the phone using bluetooth, if you are really concerned, get the phone connected to the computer, start searching for it.
    3. You cannot attach anything other than photos with your emails, funny, ridiculous and a senseless approach when you waited such long time for a Windows phone, hoping you are going to take it on a trip, replacing your laptop/tablet devices
  3. Notification area limitations
    1. There is no dedicated notification area for Windows phone 8, if you want to see the status, you must drag down from the top of the screen, another childish senseless approach. Exactly like how MS has decided that start button is not necessary for end users.
    2. Once the device is locked, there are no notifications available anywhere, you are staring at a blank, truly blank screen
  4. Communication limitations
    1. Windows phone 8 by default fail to retrieve the GPRS/MMS settings for many carriers around the world. User must install a software from apps store to have a workaround. link and the funniest part is, if you try to search for the application, you are not going to find it. So, you have to type in the link as exactly from your phone browser to locate it.
    2. Wireless settings does not allow the user to specify IPV4 settings, another pretty cumbersome approach, especially in corporate environments.

We invite your valued observations now. Do you have comments? please post them here

 

regards,

admin

Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Rapid forms development using Developer 6i forms

 

Moving from client server architecture to R12 based domains could be quite challenging for Oracle developers, especially those who have spent years, enjoying the flexibility of testing forms modules from the local development machines prior moving the “working” modules to the production instances.

Let us see the general development scenario for R12 instances.

  1. From 10g forms, connect to database
  2. open TEMPLATE.fmb and save as “XXMYFORM” etc
  3. Then keep on adding the elements

Now, move the form module to $AU_TOP/forms/US and compile it to respective application repositories

Create form, menu items…

A long list and the most frustrating is keeping on FTP the slightly modified forms module to the R12 instance to compile and testing.

We have came across a quick resolution for this PIA(Pain in the ASS) approach (for forms modules which do not use folder views) by using developer 6i (Uhu, beware Oracle fan boys would tell you, Oracle does not support developer 6i any further)

Create a template.fmb using Developer 6i forms

Change the system coordinates to use inches in the place of points

image

  1. Save the template.fmb
  2. Using save as, save your template.fmb as a new fmb file (eg: aa.fmb)
  3. Connect to apps database instance and start adding windows, canvases, blocks etc to the form and TEST IT locally!!!
  4. TEST it until the results are as expected.
  5. Make a backup for your working module (copy aa.fmb to bb.fmb for example)

 

Open your aa.fmb file, developed using forms 6i with Developer suite 10g forms designer (You will get prompts stating the possible conversions for triggers, coding etc)

Open TEMPLATE.fmb and save it as “MYAPPSFORM.fmb”

Now, please give maximum attention towards copying the objects from your 6i module which is opened with Developer 10g forms, TO your form module which will go to apps instance

  1. Copy all the windows you have created with 6i module to 10g forms
  2. Copy all the canvases you have created with 6i module to 10g forms
  3. Copy all the blocks you have created with 6i module to 10g forms
  4. Copy record groups, lovs, form level triggers if any

Now, try to compile the 10g form. If you have copied everything from 6i, this new form shouldn’t give you any compilation errors.

Move the form to apps instance, compile, create forms, menus and do final testing, confirming everything is working fine.

regards,

admin

Oracle Developer 6i & Oracle database 11g R2 (11.2.0.1.0)

 

A default installation of 11g R2 11.2.0.1.0 may not be very pleasant for Oracle developers who are still working with Developer 6i suite!

Our test lab installation has by default taken “NLS_CHARACTERSET AL32UTF8” as default database character set and we were unable to connect to the database from Developer 6i components like forms and reports.

As a workaround, we dropped the database and re-created it using database character set “WE8MSWIN1252” and later with “AR8MSWIN1256” as we needed Arabic support

An interesting discussion could be found here about the character set

Now, we are able to connect to the database, continue our development using developer 6i

Note: Please consult Oracle prior applying such workaround solutions to production environments. Our main intention was to find out a method to connect to 11g R2 database from Developer 6i products.

 

 

Regards,

admin

 

 

Install Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 (64Bit) on Windows 8 Professional 64Bit

 

Environment

  1. Windows 8 Professional – 64Bit (i5 Processor, 8GB memory)
  2. Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 (64Bit)

Important

Once you finished downloading the installation source from Oracle, extract the files using any available unzip utility.

Copy all the folders from “win64_11gR2_database_2of2\database\stage\Components” to

“win64_11gR2_database_1of2\database\stage\Components” folder to avoid warnings about missing components during installation. Oracle should fix it, right?

If your computer is a domain member, then

    1. Create a local user
    2. Add the user to “Administrator” group
    3. Logon as local user
    4. If you are installing Oracle on D:\ , right click and assign full rights to your account on that particular drive. Only applicable with Window7 and Windows 8

Start the installation, and you will be provided a warning. Refer the image below

warning1

Ignore it

Proceed with the installation

Ignore the update related warning also

warning2

Just follow the prompts and complete the installation. It should be a smooth sailing.

Prior trying to access the database, make sure you changed the sqlnet.ora file following

# sqlnet.ora Network Configuration File: D:\oracle\product\11.2.0\dbhome_1\network\admin\sqlnet.ora
# Generated by Oracle configuration tools.

# This file is actually generated by netca. But if customers choose to
# install “Software Only”, this file wont exist and without the native
# authentication, they will not be able to connect to the database on NT.

# SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES= (NTS)

SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES= (NONE)

NAMES.DIRECTORY_PATH= (TNSNAMES, EZCONNECT)

We will post more screen shots soon. Stay tuned!

regards,

admin