As Published In March/April 2013

COMMUNITY: Peer-to-Peer

Flexible Solutions

Mining the capabilities of Oracle Application Express, Oracle Database, and Oracle Exadata 

Peter Raganitsch

Peer Specs Company: click-click IT Solutions, a company specializing in application development and consulting in Oracle Application Express, and click-click’s sister company FOEX, which creates plug-ins for Oracle Application Express Job title/description: Founder and CEO, click-click IT Solutions, designing and developing Oracle Application Express applications and providing consulting services and workshops. Cofounder and architect, FOEX. Location: Vienna, Austria Oracle credentials: Oracle Application Express Developer Certified Expert, with 17 years of experience using Oracle products Oracle ACE

What’s your favorite tool or technique on the job? Oracle Application Express is my favorite tool because one can extend and enhance it as needed. You can cover almost every possible use case, as long as an Oracle database is involved. No matter how big or small an application needs to be, from a lightweight Web interface to a rich internet application, anything is possible.

How are you using mobile computing in your work? I’ve written some nice mobile applications using Oracle Application Express and jQuery Mobile. This has allowed me to access the most important KPIs [key performance indicators] and application functions from my phone. 

What’s your go-to Oracle reference? Over the last few years it’s been the Application Express API Reference and the Oracle Application Express Application Builder User’s Guide, both from Oracle’s documentation library. I keep them in PDF format on my notebook, tablet, and phone.
 

Mike Swing

Peer Specs Company: TruTek, an Oracle Certified Partner specializing in Oracle training and consulting Job title/description: CTO, advising TruTek’s Oracle Applications customers on how to upgrade their systems and achieve the best performance Location: Park City, Utah Oracle credentials: Oracle Certified DBA (Oracle7, Oracle8, Oracle8i), with 23 years of experience using Oracle products Oracle ACE

How did you get started in IT? I was a software engineer for a government contractor working on classified projects, writing mostly Ada code. In 1989, my employer asked me to use this new software, the Oracle database, to store information. I became a DBA without even knowing it— I thought I was still a software engineer.

What’s your favorite tool or technique on the job? Using the AD Merge Patch utility is currently my favorite tool. As an Oracle Applications DBA, I’ve become focused on Oracle E-Business Suite upgrades, and one of the best ways to simplify and reduce the downtime for upgrades is to use AD Merge Patch.

What technology has most changed your life? Oracle E-Business Suite. When I first started working with back-office business operations, almost all business software, ERP [enterprise resource planning], and shop floor software was custom developed. Now, Oracle Shop Floor Management and many other products are all integrated together in Oracle E-Business Suite.
 

Satyendra Kumar Pasalapudi

Peer Specs Company: Apps Associates, an IT service and solution provider focused on Oracle Applications, including Oracle Fusion Applications; Oracle Fusion Middleware; business intelligence; infrastructure administration; and managed services Job title/description: Practice manager, part of the Infrastructure Managed Services team supporting customers 24/7 Location: Hyderabad, India Oracle credentials: Oracle Exadata 11g Certified Implementation Specialist, with more than 13 years of experience using Oracle products Oracle ACE

Which features in Oracle engineered systems are you currently finding most valuable? I really appreciate the thought process behind the success of the engineered systems and find all “smart” features in Oracle Exadata valuable. Exadata Smart Scan is especially valuable, in that it improves query performance by offloading intensive query processing and data mining scoring to scalable, intelligent storage servers. It also avoids unnecessary traffic between the storage and database layers.

How are you using mobile computing in your work? I use my iPhone extensively for all e-mails and alerts. For database alerts, I use an app that sets a different ringtone for each specific alert. I also read Oracle Magazine on my iPhone.

What green practices do you use in your work? I always avoid excessive disk I/Os by optimizing queries and creating indexes, which in turn saves power by avoiding unnecessary disk spindles and excessive heat dissemination in the data centers. And I use my Kindle extensively, to save paper.

Learn more about the Oracle ACE Program.